GETTING STARTED
Where to start.
Inventory, bars, dimmer racks, lighting plan, check. That order and no other: it is the one in which the application refuses nothing.
1. Fill the inventory
Always start here. A fixture that is not in the inventory cannot be hung on a bar: the lighting plan screen has nothing to offer you.
Enter the fixtures
Inventory tab, Fixtures sub-tab. For each one: its name, its brand, its optics — fresnel, profile, PAR, cyc — and above all its kind.
The catch — The kind decides everything else. "Conventional" means a lamp and nothing more: it will need a dimmer channel. "DMX" means LED or moving light: it gets its own address, and you must then enter its channel count. The application refuses a DMX fixture with no channel count, because it would occupy no channel and the patch check would approve a wrong plan.
Enter the lamps
Lamps sub-tab. The base matters as much as the wattage: it is what tells you whether a lamp fits a fixture. Set an alert threshold.
The catch — A threshold of zero means "not watching", not "alert as soon as it is empty". Without that distinction the whole inventory would end up flagged and nobody would look at the list any more.
2. Declare the bars
A bar carries fixtures. It is described by three numbers, and the first is the one people get wrong.
Distance, height, length
Bars tab. Distance is measured from the proscenium line — the origin of every dimension in a theatre. Height is the trim height. Length bounds the lateral position of the fixtures.
The catch — A front-of-house bar sits before the proscenium: its distance is therefore negative, and that is correct. Entering 4 instead of −4 puts your front light upstage, and the stage view shows it immediately.
3. Declare the dimmer racks
Do this before patching anything. It is also the step that prevents the most costly mistake of the rig.
Address, circuit count, capacity
Patch tab. A rack has a name, a starting DMX address, its number of circuits, and the power one circuit accepts — 2 kW is standard, many racks are 3 kW.
The catch — A rack occupies as many DMX channels as it has circuits. A 24-way rack addressed at 1 occupies channels 1 to 24. That is what gets forgotten: placing a LED bar at 12 works perfectly on paper and lights random circuits on stage. Lumika compares both in the same space and tells you before the rig.
4. Build the lighting plan
Only now. Each placed fixture takes a model from the inventory, a bar, a position and a patch.
Place, number, patch
Lighting plan tab. The number is the one shouted during the rig — it is neither the address nor the channel. Lateral position is measured from the centre line: negative stage right, positive stage left.
The catch — The form follows the kind of fixture: a conventional one asks only for a channel, a DMX one only for an address. You can never fill both — a fixture carrying both is one nobody knows how to bring up.
Let Lumika allocate
Patch tab, "Suggest an allocation" button. It places conventional fixtures on the channels: hungriest first, then the first channel that takes it. You see the suggestion before applying it.
The catch — Whatever you patched by hand is never moved: it completes a patch, it does not redo it behind your back. And a fixture drawing more than a whole channel is refused and named, never forced in.
5. Check, then print
The last two screens you look at, and the ones that save your evening.
The stage view
Stage tab. The stage seen from above, the bars at their distance. The Bars screen shows the grid from the front; this one shows depth, and depth decides everything — front light from too far flattens the volumes.
The patch sheet
Sheet tab, Print button. This is the document you take to the rig: sorted by patch rather than by fixture number, because you do not look for "where is 12" but for "what is on channel 7".
The catch — Fixtures with no patch are listed first, on purpose. A hung fixture nobody patched is what you discover in the blackout.