Getting Started Getting Started: Stageplot Builder
Monday, 24 June 2024
This is intended as a beginners guide to the Stageplot Builder within Master Patch.
The Stage Plot Builder lives inside what is known as the 'side slider'. The side slider can be found on the left hand side of the Band Page and gives access to a number of focused pages for different tasks.
The Stageplot builder gives the user the ability to build stage plots from scratch using a set of pre-defined icons and objects. All icons that come with Master Patch are vector graphics which means the user can scale them infinitely without any loss of resolution. The Stageplot builder is built with a set of tools which allow the user to make highly customised and consistent stage plots with any level of detail desired.
Upon clicking on the Stageplot Builder Matrix button you will be taken to the Patch Matrix Page, which features two four areas.
- The Ribbon Menu
- The gallery
- The canvas
- The Icon Options menu
The Ribbon Menu
The ribbon menu contains additional functionality related to the Stageplot Builder.
- Insert Object
- Insert object opens a drop down menu giving the user to an expanded icon set for insertion to the canvas via a selection of additional categorised sub menus.
- At the bottom of the dorpdown menu the option to 'insert external' can be seen. This is a feature which allows the user to insert an image into the Canvas, this can be useful for example if the user already has a highly details stage plot and they would rather annotate it than draw it from scratch.
- Clear stageplot
- This button clears the stageplot entirely, which can be useful when the user needs to start from scratch and does not want to clear each icon individually.
The Gallery
To the left of the Canvas the gallery can be found. The gallery offers quick access to common icons that you are likly to often use when building a stageplot. The gallery is also where you can see the icons for the input devices as defined in the project.
It is important to know that if an input devices has been inserted into a stageplot and the user then changes the colour of the line system, that the icons already in a canvas space will not be updated to match. However, the icons in the Gallery will be updated to match the changes made to the project.
The gallery is also scrollable to see more icons.
The Canvas
The canvas is where the user is able to manipulate icons and images inserted from one of the other menus.
Here, icons can be resized, moved, mirrored and arranged. Text can also be edited by double clicking on the text at the bottom of an icon. By selecting an icon in the canvas additional actions become available from the Icon Options menu, such as grouping and stack order of icons.
The Icon Options menu
The Icon Options menu allows further manipulation of a selected icon or icons. With an icon selected the user is able to manipulate properties such as stack order and grouping of icons.
With an external image inserted into the stageplot the user is also able to crop the image as well as define it as a 'background', which embeds it into the background of the Canvas and locks it in place.
