The “Start Module” and “Pre-Assigned Rails” fields of position properties are two ways of specifying the firing system equipment for the position. For any position, you can use one field or the other, but not both at the same time since they would conflict with each other. Here are two ways to access the properties for positions.
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- To view position properties in a dialog, right click on a position in the design window and select “Edit position properties”
- To view position properties in a table, go to the Window menu and select “Positions window”
The Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails fields have slightly different purposes.
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- The Start Module field specifies what module number the addressing functions should start counting from when assigning modules to a position. The module number count beginning with the Start Module continues counting forward in the next position.
- The Pre-Assigned Rails field is a comma separated list of rail addresses that specify a set of firing system rails that a position can use. The order of addresses in the list does not matter; they will always be considered in sorted order. The module number count before the position with Pre-Assigned Rails continues after that position, unaffected by the Pre-Assigned Rails.
For firing systems that do NOT have slats, the words “module” and “rail” are synonymous. For example, the word module means the same thing as rail for Cobra and FireOne. For firing systems that do have slats, such as fireTEK, the “module” refers to the piece of hardware that has four twelve-pin “slats” connected to it. For systems like fireTEK that have slats, the “rail address” is the module-and-slat number. Here are a few examples using different firing systems.
Cobra
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- To allocate a Cobra 72M to a position, enter four rail (i.e., module) numbers in the Pre-Assigned Rails field, such as 5,6,7,8
FireOne
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- To allocate a single FireOne module to a position, enter the rail (i.e., module) number in the Pre-Assigned Rails field, such as 10
fireTEK
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- To allocate a fireTEK slat to a position, enter the rail-slat numbers in the Pre-Assigned Rails field, such as 11-1, or 11-2, or 11-3, or 11-4 (to identify a specific slat on module 11)
Figure 1 – The Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails fields are two ways of specifying the firing system equipment for the position.
In the Pro version of Finale 3D, one other difference between Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails is that Pre-Assigned Rails will show up in the rack layout window for a position even before addresses have been assigned. Compare the Pre-Assigned Rails field of Figure 1 with the graphical depiction of the slats in the lower left of Figure 2. There aren’t any assigned addresses yet (no pin numbers in the slats), but the slats are still there. If the position used the Start Module field (specifying 10, say), instead of using the Pre-Assigned Rails field, then there would be no slats drawn in the lower left of Figure 2 until addresses were assigned. At that point, whatever slats were used by the addresses would show up.
It is easy to guess why Start Module doesn’t cause modules or slats to appear in the image before addresses are assigned — the software wouldn’t know how many are required!
Figure 2 – The Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails fields are two ways of specifying the firing system equipment for the position.
Addressing groups
The addressing functions divide the full set of positions into separate addressing groups and address the groups one after another. If positions share modules, the Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails properties may affect the division of the positions into addressing groups. The section Addressing groups describes the implications for the sort order of positions, and provides instructions to avoid addressing conflicts that are possible when using Start Module and Pre-Assigned Rails incorrectly.