Part 6

The patchbay

Patchbay Mode puts the studio's patchbay drawing on screen. Draw a cable from jack to jack for every patch the session needs, and the patch prints with the setup sheet, with a list of every cable.

Demo Setup in Patchbay Mode. The toolbar switch reads Table, Layout and Patchbay, with Patchbay selected. The studio's patchbay drawing fills the canvas. Red, purple and blue cables run from the studio tie lines at the top to the microphone lines, green, orange and red cables run from tie lines on the right down to the line inputs, and a red and a blue cable run down the page to an LA2A. Small rings sit around each connected jack. Cable color swatches, a Sag slider, a Rings and Solid switch with Rings picked, zoom buttons showing 100% and Reset view sit at the top right. — Patchbay Mode: the studio's patchbay drawing, with this setup's cables on it.

Opening Patchbay Mode

The editor's toolbar has a switch with three buttons: Table, Layout and Patchbay. Click Patchbay to open the drawing, and Table to go back to the sheet.

Toggle Patchbay Mode has no shortcut until you give it one in Settings → Keybinds. It switches between Patchbay Mode and Table Mode. ⌘L still goes to Layout Mode, from Patchbay Mode too.

Where the drawing comes from

The patchbay drawing belongs to the studio, so every setup in that studio uses the same one. Each setup has its own cables.

Berklee rooms come with their patchbay drawings, except Studio A76, which doesn't have one yet.
Your own studios get one in the studio editor. See The studio's patchbay.

If the studio has no drawing yet, Patchbay Mode says This studio doesn't have a patchbay drawing yet. Click Upload patchbay PDF… and pick the file. It becomes the studio's drawing.

The drawing has to be a PDF. The app reads the jack labels from the text in the PDF, so a drawing exported from a drawing or CAD program works best. A scanned drawing has no text to read. You can still draw cables on it, but they won't snap to jacks, and the hint at the bottom says No jacks could be read from this drawing — cables can go anywhere.

Drawing a cable

Pick a color

Click one of the swatches at the top right: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple, Black, Gray or White. The Sag slider next to them sets how far the cable droops between its ends. The app remembers both for the next cable.
Connect two jacks

Drag from one jack to another and let go. Or click one jack, then click the other. Each end snaps onto a jack when you're close to one. Hover a jack to see its name and the strip it's on.

While a cable follows the pointer, move toward the edge of the canvas and the view scrolls that way, so you can reach a row that's off screen. If you let go outside the canvas, the cable stays on the pointer: click a jack to finish it, or press Esc to drop it. Esc also drops a cable you started with a click.

Selecting cables

Click a cable to select it. ⌘-click adds or removes one.
Drag on empty space to draw a box. Every cable it crosses is selected. Hold ⌘ or ⇧ to add them to what's already selected.
⌘A selects every cable, and Esc clears the selection.

Hover any cable to see where it goes, such as AA218 → A9 (MICROPHONE LINES) · Blue. The far end's strip is named when it's different from the near end's.

Patchbay Mode zoomed to 293% on the top of the drawing. Red, purple and blue cables run from studio tie lines AA213 to AA218 down to microphone lines A4 to A9, a green cable runs from AA202 to A17, and green, orange and red cables run from AA231 to AA234 down to line inputs D21 to D24. Each cable end is a ring around its jack, so the jack numbers still show. One blue cable is selected: it has a pale outline and a ring handle at each end, and a tooltip reads AA218 → A9 (MICROPHONE LINES) · Blue. The toolbar shows the Blue swatch picked, the Sag slider, a red Delete button and the Rings and Solid switch. — A selected cable has a handle at each end. Hovering it names both ends.

Changing and deleting cables

Color and sag. With cables selected, the swatches and the Sag slider change those cables instead of the next one. With several selected, the toolbar says how many.
Re-patching. Drag an end handle of a selected cable to another jack.
Deleting. Click Delete in the toolbar, or press Del or ⌘⌫.

Rings or solid plugs

Each cable end is drawn as a ring around its jack, so the jack's label still reads through it. The cable meets the ring on the side it comes from, and the cable itself is slightly see-through, so the rows it hangs across stay readable.

The Rings and Solid switch on the toolbar changes the look. Solid draws each end as a filled plug on top of the jack. The switch changes every cable in every setup, and exports print the style you picked.

Zooming and panning

Scroll to zoom in and out around the pointer, or pinch on a trackpad.
Buttons: − and + at the top right, with the current zoom between them. Reset view returns to 100%, where the whole drawing fits.
Keys: the Layout Mode zoom keys work here too. ⌘⇧= zooms in, ⌘⇧− zooms out, and ⌘⇧0 resets the view.

Zoom goes from 25% to 400%. A moment after you zoom in, the drawing sharpens to match, so small jack labels stay crisp. To move around, hold Space and drag, or drag with the middle mouse button.

Undo

⌘Z undoes your last cable change, and ⌘⇧Z redoes it. Drawing, re-patching, recoloring and deleting are one step each, and so is one drag of the Sag slider. Cables save as you work, just like the sheet.

Printing the patch

Switch on Patchbay in the Export to PDF dialog. The switch only appears when the studio has a patchbay drawing. The PDF then ends with:

The drawing with your cables on it, on a page of its own at the drawing's real size. A large patchbay drawing makes a large page, so print it scaled to fit.
A list called Patch cables, with one row per cable: its number, where it starts, where it ends and its color. Rows are grouped under the name of the strip each cable starts on. An end that isn't on a jack reads Unlabeled point.

With Colored off, the drawing and cables print in gray, and the list still names each cable's color. The spreadsheet export has a Patchbay switch too. Part 3 covers both.

Good to know

Duplicating a setup copies its cables. A studio template doesn't keep them.
In Split View, each side has its own Patchbay Mode and its own cables.
Patchbay Mode has no pop-out window. Only Layout Mode does.
If the studio's drawing is replaced, cables stay where they are. Ends that land on a jack of the new drawing take its name. If the drawing is removed, the cables are kept but hidden until a drawing is uploaded again. See The studio's patchbay.
A setup file includes its cables. See Part 12.