I can only speak personally, but I am not familiar with the majority of fixtures and manufacturers in the Library. Finding the right light therefore can be very time consuming and frustrating.
Since all of the information about each individual fixture is already there (can't have a fixture without it), would it not be possible to have a pop-up window or some other way of viewing a fixture's specs without having to select and drop it into the model? Perhaps a right-click or hover over a fixture in the list to see what the DMX channel count/modes, wattage, lumens, etc are? Just general specs?
Say you need a LED RBGW pinspot; no specific manufacture, you just want the brightest, narrowest beam unit and you don't have any knowledge of the tons of different manufacturer's models available. To find that one best unit, you have to import each individually to see the stats in the "Selected Items" window. Searching for "LED Pin Spot" narrows the list, but there's still a lot to choose from, and the beam outputs vary tremendously. Dragging each one into the model takes a lot of time. A quick hover or right click to see what the beam angle and wattage are would be a HUGE advantage.
Any thoughts? Am I missing a better way to narrow a search?
Thanks,
Eric
You can use the selections below the search box to make your broad selection. Then narrow your search by adding several conditions between quotation marks separated by plusses.
i.e.
Check "Moving Head" and "Lighting"
type in the searchbox:
"RGBW"+"Led"+"150"
Brings you Robe Ledbeams 150 and a few other fixtures. Only 5 in total to choose from.
To be able to filter on weight, power consumption, and other specs that are not in the name of the fixture would be a great addition.
I am picking up this old feature request, bevause things have changed since 2022.
There is more and more info in the library that could be usefull to make searchable. As indicated below, right now you can search for categories and words that are in the fixture name. But it would be great to be able to search for a fixture by all its properties. Filtering like in most webshops would be great. A would think about sliders that you can set to search between a maximum or minimum level of certian properties and rethink the checkboxes to make the search a bit more refined. At the moment there are categories that complement each other, (like Conventional and Lighting) but also ones that cannot be both true (like Scanner and Yoke). For the latter it should not even be possible to select them both. I suggest to use a radio button for those.
I am thinking about extra items such as:
Wattage: 1watt --------------------------- 10kW
Weigth: 0.1 kg ---------------------------- 100Kg
Beam angle: 0.4 degrees--------------- 180 degrees
Colorsystem: {radiobutton}
[] Additive (RGB, RGBW, RGBAL, etc.)
[] Substractive (CMY)
I think "Uncategorized" is the most useless item on the current list ;-)
If we're being honest the real question is whether we want our software to be a tool for discovering and choosing between fixtures on the market. And the jury is still out on that.
I understand. It would give a unique feature to your software though, that nobody else in the game has. I only see this in the architectural world in an app called Dialux, where there are (admittedly) many more brands to choose from, but it is very useful (and it made me familiar with the ease of use of such a rich filter)