On the old Avos, it's common practice to use the Sim to patch and then note down the numbers and setting etc. What if the fixture file is wrong anyway? I would also argue that in planning these systems, one should understand the fixture and the mode you are using it in to a certain level, that involves checking the manual anyway especially if you don't know the fixture. I can input 2 pieces of data for an ML type into Excel just as quick as pick it from a library, extrapolating with calc and dragging cells down for hundreds of fixtures per universe. This is true for the console personalities too, which is why many of us end up having to either build our own, edit existing ones or put in a desperate call to the console maker to build one for us. Whatever you use is unlikely to have the fixture/mode you want on file every time, which means building it. There are whole companies that work full time on fixture libraries for consoles these days, which is why I suggest Excel and cut n paste, with a few calcs. There are changes in the market place for moving lights so frequently, that you pay through the nose to have every fixture, every mode, laid on a plate. I think that with the market the way it is, many software developers are going to provide ways in create your own fixtures more, support preset fixture libraries less and LD Calc is not Paul's main gig. It also seems like it might be able to calculate DIP switch data to make rigging even easier but I couldn't get it to actually do this.
This LD Calculator program seems good but doesn't have all of the fixtures I need in it - you can apparently add your own but I wondered if there was something better out there.
At the moment I'm having to look through online databases of lighting fixtures to work out how many channels/what mode etc. Lightwright looks promising - I would use Excel but I basically want something that has fixture information built-in so I can, for instance, tell it to patch 16 Mac 500s at a specific address /universe/DMX mode and it will know how many channels etc to take up.
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