Adding Bank Letter to labels when using Cobra 36M/72M

[NEC]

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OK, I get that each firing system type can have exactly one custom module definition currently however…

 

I use a mix of Cobra 18, 36, 72M and occasionally a few 6M.
My crew is usually a mix of experienced and new trainees

 

I’ll have specific use cases for each module type (single shot/cakes/finale racks/gerbs+strobes etc.)

 

The 6M is easy enough to deal with, create custom module for those positions, tweak custom module to #99-#6, address and lock the addresses.

 

18M are straight forward, one channel, 18 cues however…when I get to using the 36 and 72M I want to represent the bank letter on labels to provide additional clarity to crew. I could manually go thru the entire script and use Notes field to put this information in and create even more custom labling templates but that’s not a fun time when dealing with a number of large shows being built in a short time frame.

 

I initially thought I could pull this off tweaking the custom module deifinition to #99-B-#18 and #99-D-#18 for each module type respectively but…this breaks exporting as this all gets recombined into a singe 36 or 72 pin rail which is obviously not correct.

 

So, is there a way to make this happen without manually going thru everything and adding notes etc.? Alternately, given that othr firing systems are “close” in there definitions (FireTEK/Mongoose) with slat type exposed is this more of a feture request to have individual Cobra module definitions?

[DrewFinale]

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Hi NEC, I completely understand the usefulness of having your reports and labels indicate where you plan to use each COBRA module type. The reason the bank letters for 36M and 72M aren’t represented in addresses in Finale 3D is twofold:

 

1) Because the highest pin (i.e., cue) number is 18, not 36 or 72. A 36M or 72M is essential 2 modules or 4 modules packaged together. By contrast, the Mongoose system has an option for 2 slats of 24 pins because the pins on the actual physical module are 1 through 48.

 

2) Because the COBRA script format doesn’t use three-part addresses that include letters. A three-part address would be something like 01-A-12 which would represent module 1, bank A, pin 12. Instead, all COBRA addresses are two-part (just module and cue). By contrast, the fireTEK script format uses three-part addresses that include module, slat, and pin.

 

For these reasons, it’s really not possible for Finale 3D to represent the bank letters for the 36M or 72M in addresses. As a future improvement, we might be able to represent the modules another way. In the meantime, using one of the notes columns or another custom column in the script window is your best bet. In terms of the manual work required, I think it might be less than you think. Did you know that you can mass update script rows by selecting them, right clicking, and selecting ‘Edit properties’? This means you can just filter your script to module numbers or positions that will use 36Ms, press Ctrl+A to select all, right click, select Edit properties, and add a note to all the rows simultaneously. Then, just repeat the process for the 72Ms.

[NEC]

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Hey Drew!

 

1&2 I understand (been using Cobra for 10 years now) and I get how this would be difficult on your end, had to ask.

 

I’ve used the mass update before and it will get the job done.  I have some ideas in my head on how it might be doable programmatically but need to think them thru a bit more and ponder if it’s even worth the work if it only benefits a single firing system.  You may see an email from me.

 

Thanks Again!

 

[Author]

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