Pathway Pathport Manager 3 User Guide - Manual (Page 23)

Pathport Manager User’s Guide
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NTRODUCTION TO
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ATHPORT
M
ANAGER
Introduction
Welcome to Pathport Manager 3! This software will provide you with a powerful
yet easy-to-use tool for managing, configuring, and testing your Pathport system.
Pathport Manager and your Pathport system will help you efficiently manage
lighting control data throughout your facility.
How does it work?
A Pathport system is a data manager that utilises a distributed network of
devices that are capable of adding data to, or reading data from the network.
Because the system is distributed, every device has access to all of the
information being carried on the system, and can be configured to use the data
differently than any other device on the system. The ability of every device to
individually process data provides the amazing power of Pathport.
By distributing the processing of network data, a Pathport system is able to grow
and re-configure to meet the changing needs of a facility with the minimum
possible effort and expense.
No really, how does it work?!?
Every DMX input port or Pathport Alliance controller adds control data to a
32768 channel universe of xDMX channels on the network. These channels are
added in blocks of 512 channels called "Sources".
Output ports, or controllable Pathport Alliance devices, can then be configured to
read individual or multiple channels from the xDMX universe, and use them in a
particular way. Just like most DMX512 devices can be patched to an individual
DMX channel, every output channel on every Pathport DMX output port can be
patched to an individual xDMX channel.
Patching is done by creating "Universes" within Pathport Manager. A universe is
meant to be the complete grouping of xDMX channels that a Pathport DMX
output port sends to all of the equipment that is connected to its DMX output. A
Universe may be the entire DMX data stream from a single controller, or a
complex combination of DMX levels from a number of sources.
Once a universe is created, regardless of its complexity, an output port can then
be configured to send that universe as DMX data by patching it within Pathport
Manager.
Entire DMX universes can be patched without having to painstakingly construct
universes from scratch. Whenever an input is configured to place its DMX