Creating axes
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Go to the Axes tab in the right panel.
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Click New. A new axis appears in the tree.
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Select the axis. Its Axis Setup window opens in place of the chart.
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Give the axis a meaningful name such as Pan, Tilt, Left Lift, or Curtain. This name appears in every chart, tree view, and dialog.
To remove an axis, select it and click Delete (or use the context menu). Deleting an axis also removes the matching profile from every show.
Figure 3. The Axes tab. The Axis Setup window for the selected axis fills the chart area, with its tabs down the left and the controls bar across the top. The toolbar and axis tree are in the right panel.
If the project has no axes, the window says Add an axis to begin setup.
The controls bar
Figure 3a. The controls bar.
The controls bar stays visible on every tab:
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Status: the motor's state, such as In position, Moving, Disabled, Overload or Not connected. It turns red for a fault.
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Position: the live position in the axis's unit.
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Enabled: turns the motor on or off. When it's off, the motor can be turned by hand.
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Find home: runs the motor's homing sequence.
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Go home: moves the axis to position 0.
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Connect / Disconnect: connects to this axis's motor.
General tab
Figure 3b. The General tab.
Axis card: the name, colour, and Position decimals, with an example of how positions will look.
Connection card
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Motor lists the motors found on the network by serial number, with their IP address or COM port.
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A motor already used by another axis shows that axis's name; choosing it moves it to this axis. You can also type a serial number.
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Find motors searches again, and Manage opens the Connections window (see chapter 5).
Units and gearing card: sets how motor turns become your units.
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The motor always has 50,000 pulses per turn.
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Tick Gearbox if there is one, then enter it as motor turns ⇔ gear output turns (for example 5 ⇔ 1 for a 5:1 gearbox).
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Enter the travel per output turn (for example 1 gear output turn ⇔ 360 deg) and pick or type the unit name.
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The summary shows how many pulses and motor turns make one unit, and which way the motor turns.
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Tick Invert direction if the axis moves the wrong way.
Caution. Existing shows are stored in the axis's units. Changing these settings rescales every show for this axis.
Run To card: the speed and acceleration used by Run To Cursor on the Shows tab.
Controller tab
Figure 3c. The Controller tab.
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Controller card
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Choose the game controller used for recording, and which of its axes moves this axis.
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Tick Invert direction to reverse it.
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Controllers plugged in or removed are detected automatically.
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Response card
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Position Range: the whole travel covered from one end of the stick to the other.
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Speed Range: the speed at full deflection.
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Responsiveness Gain: higher values respond faster. Reset to Default sets 16.
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Live card: move the stick to see its value and the position and speed it would give.
Homing tab
Figure 3d. The Homing tab.
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Read from motor loads the motor's current homing settings.
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Write to motor sends these settings without homing. The motor keeps them after a power cycle.
Homing method card
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Choose Hard stop or Sensor, and the direction CW or CCW.
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Tick Home when the motor powers up to home automatically.
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Max torque limits the force used while homing.
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For Sensor homing, choose the sensor input.
Motion card
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Home speed shows the motor's allowed range in your units.
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Offset from home is where the axis stops after finding home. The note under it says whether the offset must be positive or negative.
Loading parameters from the motor
If a motor already has parameters dialled in (for example, after being tuned by a technician), you can pull those values into Contours instead of entering them by hand.
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Load Motor — reads parameters from the currently selected motor into its axis.
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Load All Motors — reads every connected motor in one pass. A progress dialog shows each transfer.
You can cancel a load in progress by clicking Cancel on the Motor Load dialog.