Making Patch Cord connections when patcher is locked; Possible?

miketeachesclass's icon

Hi,

There may be a way to accomplish this that I'm not thinking of, but I've been searching the forum like crazy trying to figure it out.

Is there a way to freeze an object such that patch cord connections can be made, but the object cannot be moved? On one hand, being able to patch when the patcher is locked would be nice, but being able to leave the patch unlocked without worrying about the inlets/outlets being moved would be just as handy.

This is basically for the creation of a patch-bay-like system for a patch.

Thanks,
Mike

Luke Hall's icon

Have a look at the [thispatcher] help file, specifically the "script" messages where you can "connect" and "disconnect" objects programmatically. You can do the same from within javascript too. Here is an abstraction that you can load into a [bpatcher] that works much like a patchbay. It is quite similar to [router] and [matrix~] but with visible connections and you can interface with it using the mouse even when out of edit mode.

lh

miketeachesclass's icon

Luke,

Thanks much for the reply. I knew someone had to have wondered this before. I'll post on my results when I'm able to test at home.

pid's icon

of course luke's suggestion is the coolest and most useful possible, but: "include in background" and then "lock background"? or variations thereof?

miketeachesclass's icon

Unfortunately if you lock the background, the inlets/outlets of the background object can't be accessed. Bummer.

seejayjames's icon

It would also be fantastic if you could hide connections, but still make new ones with some modifier key used. Probably not an option, but man, sometimes it would be great to connect things without all the other cords being visible.

Though after experimenting, it looks like you can select all cords (after Hide Foreground) and then turn them all transparent... then they can't be seen or even clicked, and you can make new ones. Cool. To see them again you need to Select All, then use Color... from the menu, since you can't click them to get the popup menu.

Love the new alpha feature... LOVE IT!!