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[Tim McCulloch]

I guess if one is routinely sending plots to people who've never seen or heard of the instruments being played, pictures could be useful.  For me, they largely clutter up the INFORMATION SPACE.]

Pics are great if there is a sweet spot or particular microphone placement, or special orientation of a venue/provided piece of gear or staging.

I have other thoughts I'll append later.

[Andrew Broughton]

I guess if one is routinely sending plots to people who've never seen or heard of the instruments being played, pictures could be useful.  For me, they largely clutter up the INFORMATION SPACE.]

Pics are great if there is a sweet spot or particular microphone placement, or special orientation of a venue/provided piece of gear or staging.

Nowadays it's no more difficult to paste an image or icon than a box, so why not? It does make it easier to see in a glance where each instrument and amp and so on are located without having to look at a legend or text description.

[Bob Faulkner]

Nice work!  The app seems fairly easy to use... and I like the stub you have ready to go for lighting.

pm sent.

[Frank Czar]

Hi Carlos,

I love it, great job!  I just have a few suggestions.

1. I didn't see any power icons.

2. Staging and truss, have some sort of grid or way to align the stage and truss, it's quite tedious to do a large stage or truss grid the way it is now.

3.Have an icon for truss corner blocks

[Riley Casey]

Never been a fan of photo realistic stage plots elements but then I'm old. Much happier with things like a hollow rectangle that has a legend that says Twin Reverb or a line drawing of a keyboard that says DX7 or Rhodes. One addition I'd make is a grid that can be set to feet or meters. The very best stage plots I've seen, admittedly for the most complex shows are done in Vectorworks or other CAD software and are drawn to scale. Something like that for a stage with 15-20 players and a 48+ input sound design are golden.

[Mac Kerr]

Never been a fan of photo realistic stage plots elements but then I'm old. Much happier with things like a hollow rectangle that has a legend that says Twin Reverb or a line drawing of a keyboard that says DX7 or Rhodes. One addition I'd make is a grid that can be set to feet or meters. The very best stage plots I've seen, admittedly for the most complex shows are done in Vectorworks or other CAD software and are drawn to scale. Something like that for a stage with 15-20 players and a 48+ input sound design are golden.

^^^^^THIS^^^^^

I completely agree with Riley’s post. Clear, complete, information, no pictures.

Mac
Grumpy old man…

[Andrew Broughton]

I completely agree with Riley’s post. Clear, complete, information, no pictures.

It certainly was a lovely post.
Now what about stage plots?

[Andrew Broughton]

Never been a fan of photo realistic stage plots elements but then I'm old. Much happier with things like a hollow rectangle that has a legend that says Twin Reverb or a line drawing of a keyboard that says DX7 or Rhodes. One addition I'd make is a grid that can be set to feet or meters. The very best stage plots I've seen, admittedly for the most complex shows are done in Vectorworks or other CAD software and are drawn to scale. Something like that for a stage with 15-20 players and a 48+ input sound design are golden.

Vectorworks plots are what I have for any large shows I do, and are very useful and contain all sorts of layers and information which we technicians can read and understand. So, like I said earlier, we technicians have many tools available to create stage plots the way we like them.
What's NEEDED is simple-to-use stage plot software that helps bands that don't have technicians to create useful plots. Pictures make sense for them rather than icons, and as I said, it's just as easy to drag pictures around within software now, so why not?
I should post up some of the plots I get on a regular basis and why what I'm suggesting is DESPARATELY needed. I was going to create some software myself, but what Carlos has done is almost there, and done far better than I could do! Its a hell of a lot of work creating drag/drop designing programs, and he's done an amazing job.

[Andrew Broughton]

Here's a very typical stage plot I might receive. At first glance, it seems to have all the information needed, but on closer inspection, it's not as clear as it should be.
BTW - this is one of the BETTER plots I might receive. Sometimes it's just a hand-written list of instruments with no information as to players, position, # of inputs, monitors, etc. etc...


Here's a few of the problems:


1. Backwards - audience needs to be at the bottom
2. Missing band name - get this in a pile of riders and who's is it?
3. Missing contact info - how do I reach someone to ask questions?
4. Missing input list. One can be inferred, but a list of inputs would make it much clearer.
5. Missing names of players
6. Position 2 shows "Acoustic Guitar", but 2 XLRs. Is it 2 acoustic guitars? Is it a stereo acoustic or pedal? A picture would be helpful here.
7. Position 4 shows "Fiddle DI and XLR". Again, 2 different instruments or 2 channels for 1? A picture would be helpful here.
8. It's a screenshot of a phone!

[dave briar]

Here's a very typical stage plot I might receive. At first glance, it seems to have all the information needed, but on closer inspection, it's not as clear as it should be.
BTW - this is one of the BETTER plots I might receive. Sometimes it's just a hand-written list of instruments with no information as to players, position, # of inputs, monitors, etc. etc...


Here's a few of the problems:


1. Backwards - audience needs to be at the bottom
2. Missing band name - get this in a pile of riders and who's is it?
3. Missing contact info - how do I reach someone to ask questions?
4. Missing input list. One can be inferred, but a list of inputs would make it much clearer.
5. Missing names of players
6. Position 2 shows "Acoustic Guitar", but 2 XLRs. Is it 2 acoustic guitars? Is it a stereo acoustic or pedal? A picture would be helpful here.
7. Position 4 shows "Fiddle DI and XLR". Again, 2 different instruments or 2 channels for 1? A picture would be helpful here.
8. It's a screenshot of a phone!

  ^^^^^THIS^^^^^

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