Frontpanels and Matrix

[Chris Crosskey]

Hi to all on S-D
Some of you sent responses to my posting to me at work. As our mail 
system is a bit strange when it comes to internet mail I cannot use 
either the <reply> function or decode the header and find out the 
address of who sent it so I'll reply via the list. Sorry 'bout that. 
Thanks for the advice re:Matrix 6 editor, I'll have a go at 
downloading it tonight. That said a Cubase mixer map, useful though 
it is, is not a real editor/librarian, which is what I'm after. 
Thanks though, I do use Cubase and it will come in handy.

      re: the frontpanels...
I could design the panel artwork at work using Autosketch, but as has 
been pointed out, doing the 1-10 dials is a bitch with a CAD package. 
The way round it if you must use expensive PC based solutions, is an 
extra module for Autocad (it'll work with other packages too) called 
PanelCAD. RS components sell it, it's about 80 UKP IIRC, and all it 
does is  draw dialfaces, meterfaces etc and output them in Autocad 
etc format as primitives to be included in drawings... at least I 
think thats how it works.
....
 ... better idea is to use my Atari. I have what was in its day a 300 
UKP desktop publishing package, Pagestream. It has a grid arrangement 
capable of the accuracy required for the panels, it has plenty of 
fonts for the writing, and better still, I have a scanner and have 
scanned in a .IMG (Atari graphics format) of a dial from another 
synth. Scale this to the right size, copy it up to fill the eight 
positions my panels can have dials in, and I'm away. That document 
gets saved as a template. Each module that I need then has the dials 
not needed removed from the document for its artwork, and labelling 
adde. I might bother making a few switch position primitives up as 
well. I can output it to a friends Deskjet and get a perfectly scaled 
result, and from that the technique is to photocopy onto the 
production master acetate, from which the screen is made. Moral of 
the story is dig out your old ST and get Pagestream. It now costs 
about 25 UKP, as the company the made it have decided that they won't 
be upgrading it anymore, but they haven't had a reported bug for a 
couple of years, so you can have it, but it isn't supported fully. 
It's an easy program to get your head round, and it's capable of 
fully professional outputs like Encapsulated Postscript whhich is 
what the print industry uses, and there's also a graphical file 
output as a .IMG, your choice of the seven standard .IMG resolutions 
from about 50 DPI to 2450 DPI, yep nearly 2K5 dpi.
chrisc