Softpatch

            This shows the top and bottom of the softpatch screen. The actual height will depend on the height of the main screen. Softpatching is a powerful way to customize how you control your lights. If you are not familiar with it, simply, it is the way to have one or more dimmers controlled by a single channel on the main screen. If there are several lights aimed at a particular portion of the stage at various angles, this allows you to set the light level with one channel. The ability to do this is enhanced by the feature of proportional dimming. If you look at Channel 2 in the picture, you will see that dimmers 3 and 4 are being set. Channel 4 has the extra notation of /50 meaning that it will, at most, go to 50% of total brightness. Taking channel 2 from 0 to 100 will therefore have the effect of changing dimmer 3 from 0 to 100 and dimmer 4 from 0 to 50.

The Description column has the text that will appear as a hint when the mouse is hovered over a channel box on the main screen. If the word "nbump5" is in the description, then that channel will bump to 100% when the F5 key is pressed. "nbump6" works with F6, "nbump7" with F7, and so forth up to 12. If the word is changed to "fbump5", then rather than a zero count fade when the key is released, a timed fade will happen. The time is determined by the "BumpFade=" entry in CPLighting.ini. A value of 10 is one second, 5 is 500 msec., for example. Timed bumps for F5 would be done with "tbump5(x.x)", where x.x is the duration in seconds. For example, "tbump7(4.3)" would bump the channels where that was in the description for 4.3 seconds when F7 was pressed, even when released sooner.

At the bottom of the screen, the Unpatched Dimmers button will show a window with a list of all the available or unassigned dimmers. Save will record any changes and Exit will close the screen without saving.