Lesson 8. Order in a big project

While there are four fixtures and six scenes there is nothing to tidy. But projects grow: twenty fixtures, forty scenes, a dozen chases… and there you are, scrolling the list for “that particular blue one” in the middle of a performance. This lesson is about the tools of order: your own fixture groups, favourites and search, and the most important thing of all — saving the project and the auto-backup that will save your work if something goes wrong.

Step 1. Your own fixture groups

The program sorts fixtures by type on its own: “Pars”, “Heads”, “Lasers” — we have been using that since the first lesson. But at a real venue the division is usually different: “left truss”, “dance floor”, “backlight”. The type is the same, the role is not.

That is what “My groups” is for — groups you create yourself, by your own logic.

📍 Where: Prog mode → above the fixture list, the “All fixtures / My groups” switch → the “My groups” tab.

How it works, step by step:

Press the “Group” button — a new group appears and you can type its name straight away (“Dance floor”, for example).
Fill it by dragging: grab a fixture card with the mouse and drop it right onto the group. The fixture “chip” appears inside.
Want a finer division — press “Subgroup” inside the group (“Dance floor → Left side”, for instance). Nesting goes one level deep; deeper is not needed.

Useful things to do with a group:

What to do	How
Rename	Double-click the name
Colour and icon	The palette button 🎨 — the group becomes recognisable
Take a fixture out of the group	The cross on the fixture chip
Move a fixture to another group	Drag the chip from group to group
Delete a group	The bin 🗑

Fig. 1 — The “My groups” panel: groups with fixtures and a subgroup

💡 Worth understanding: one fixture can belong to several groups at once — to “Heads”, and to “Left truss”, and to “Backlight”. These are not copies but one and the same fixture, simply “written into several circles”. And do not be afraid to delete groups: the fixtures are not deleted — only the membership disappears.

💡 What it is all for: your groups turn up everywhere fixtures are selected — one click picks “Dance floor” in Prog, and “Left truss” can be put on a submaster in Live and silenced with the M button. The better thought out your groups, the faster you work.

Step 2. Favourites and search

When there are dozens of scenes, a simple rule helps: the working ones go into favourites.

Mark the scenes, chases and playlists you use often with a star ★ (the star on the card, or right-click → “Add to favourites”).
In Live, above the button grid, there is a “Favourites / All” switch: during a performance keep it on “Favourites” — only what you actually need today is in front of you.
Cannot spot it — use the search above the list: a couple of letters of the name and the list is filtered.

Fig. 2 — Live: the “Favourites / All” toggle and the search field

💡 Tip: favourites work hand in hand with the banks from the previous lesson: a bank remembers its own set of favourites — the “pages” of the console for the parts of a show.

Step 3. Saving the project to a file

Everything you have built — fixtures, scenes, chases, playlists, groups — lives in the project. The program keeps it on the computer’s disk all the time, but the right habit is to save the project to a file:

📍 Where: the File → Save menu (or Ctrl+S). The file gets the .smp extension.

To open a file — File → Open (Ctrl+O). To create an empty project — File → New project (Ctrl+N).

💡 A nice detail: the .smp file is self-contained — it carries the fixture profiles inside it. Open it on a friend’s clean computer and everything works, with nothing to install.

☁️ A project does not have to live on a disk alone. The File → Cloud menu → “Save to cloud” / “Load from cloud”: the whole project (fixtures, scenes, chases, playlists and your own gobo images) sits on our server and is visible from any computer where you have signed in to your account. Handy when you prepare the show at home and play it from a laptop at the venue. Cloud storage is part of the PRO add-on.

⚠️ Careful: “Open” and “New project” replace the current project — the program warns you honestly and asks for confirmation. If you agreed in haste, read the next step.

Step 4. Auto-backup — insurance against “everything is gone”

Picture this: you accidentally deleted half the scenes, or opened somebody else’s project over your own, or simply “pressed something and it all disappeared”. Relax: the program makes backup copies of the project regularly, by itself, without you.

📍 Where: the File → Restore from auto-backup menu.

A list of copies with their date and time opens. Choose the one where “everything was still fine” — and the project returns to that state.

💡 And one more everyday lifesaver — undo: Ctrl+Z undoes the last action (the program remembers dozens of steps back), Ctrl+Y brings back what was undone. Accidentally moved the faders or deleted a scene — Ctrl+Z and it never happened. The ↶ ↷ arrow buttons are in the header too.

Step 5. Small things that save time

Finally, three little tools of order:

The size of the venue. The “Venue” button in the visualizer — enter the real width and depth of your room in metres (or pick a preset: club, stage, hall). The layout of the fixtures becomes honest and the 3D picture becomes truthful.
Capturing a state into a chase. In the chase editor a step can be created not only from a ready scene: set the light by hand and press “Capture current state” — the current picture becomes a step. Handy for quick variations.
Stop all effects. On the “Effects” tab, on the right of its header, there is a red “Stop all effects” button — it kills every running effect at once without touching scenes and chases. Useful when you have layered on too much and it is easier to start again.

Fig. 5 — The “Stop all effects” button on the “Effects” tab — Fig. 5 — Switching all effects off with one button

Let’s sum up

A big project is no longer chaos but a system:

your own groups (“Dance floor”, “Left truss”) with subgroups, colours and drag and drop — and a fixture can be in several at once;
★ favourites + search — during a performance only what you need is in front of you;
Ctrl+S → an .smp file — moving, versions, a backup (the file is self-contained);
auto-backup — the program keeps copies by itself, and “File → Restore” brings the past back;
Ctrl+Z — instant undo for accidents.

What is next: in the following lesson — import and exchange: we bring profiles and whole projects over from other programs (QLC+, FreeStyler), build a non-standard fixture in the constructor and share a profile with the community.