Resizing and Rotating Fixtures

On the Mapping field, a single fixture is just one pixel — it has no size or direction of its own. So here, "resizing" means spreading apart or squeezing together a group of fixtures, or stretching or shortening a spline, and "rotating" means turning the selected fixtures around the center of the selection. All of this is done with the handles of the selection frame while the Select and Move tool is active; right next to it, on the toolbar, are the flip buttons. Any of these actions can be undone with Ctrl+Z and redone with Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z).

The Selection Frame and Its Handles

Select the Select and Move tool on the toolbar and select some fixtures — a rectangular frame will appear around them, built from the outermost points of the selection. The frame has four kinds of elements:

• Corners — four square scale handles. The handle under the cursor is highlighted, so you can see what you're about to grab before you click.
• Center square — the move handle: convenient for dragging a dense group without risking grabbing an individual fixture.
• Rotation handle — placed to the right of the frame and connected to its center by a thin line. Its distance from the frame on screen always stays the same, no matter how far you zoom in on the field.
• Angle value — the label next to the rotation handle, showing the current angle in degrees to the hundredth. For freshly selected fixtures it reads 0.00.

If exactly one single fixture is selected, there are no scale or rotation handles — only the move square remains. Stretching or rotating a single point makes no sense: select a spline or several fixtures, and the handles will appear.

The frame only exists for the Select and Move tool. With the other tools on the toolbar — Hand, Create Layout, Add Fixture, Add Spline, Edit Spline, Duplicate — it won't appear. If the frame doesn't show up around your fixtures, first check which tool is active.

Resizing

1. Select fixtures: by clicking, Shift-clicking, or with a marquee. You can select splines and single fixtures together.
2. Hover over any corner of the frame and press the left mouse button.
3. Drag the corner. The opposite corner of the frame stays in place, and the fixtures stretch or shrink along with the frame. Changes are visible immediately, while you drag.
4. Release the button — the new position is fixed. The whole drag counts as a single action: Ctrl+Z will return the fixtures to their original size all at once.

Modifiers you can hold while dragging a corner:

Key	What it does
no key	Width and height change independently; the opposite corner stays fixed
Shift	Keeps the selection's proportions: height is calculated from width
Alt	Scaling happens from the center of the frame instead of the opposite corner — the selection expands in both directions at once
Ctrl	Scales along a single axis only: the program picks whichever direction you moved the mouse more, and leaves the other one untouched

The proportion and scale-from-center modifiers are read from the left-hand Shift and Alt keys.

Things worth knowing about scaling:

• You can't flip the selection inside out with a corner. A corner can't pass the opposite side: the frame stops at a minimum width and height of one pixel. To get a mirror image, use the Flip buttons (see below).
• Snap to grid. While the Snap to Grid toggle on the toolbar is on (it's on by default), fixture coordinates are rounded to whole field pixels after scaling. Turn it off if the fixtures need to sit between cells.
• Flat selection. If all the selected fixtures lie on a strictly horizontal or strictly vertical line, the selection has no second dimension: scaling only works along that line, and Shift proportions do nothing in this case.
• The size of the fixtures themselves doesn't change. Only their placement is scaled: each fixture still occupies exactly one pixel, just as before. What changes is the distance between fixtures.

What Happens to Fixtures When Scaling

The number of fixtures and their addresses never change during scaling — only the placement changes. But exactly how the fixtures get rearranged depends on what you're stretching.

What's selected	What happens
Single fixtures	The fixtures move apart or closer together, each one independently
A spline with Even distribution	The line's vertices spread apart, and the fixtures are laid out again along the entire new length at equal intervals — the spacing between them changes
A spline with Fixed Pixels distribution	The fixtures sit at the vertices of the polyline, one per vertex, and simply move along with the vertices

This leads to two practical conclusions.

• The Fixture Count field in the Properties window can only be edited for the even distribution — that's where it sets the density of fixtures along the line. Stretching the spline also changes the density, but it changes the line's length at the same time; if you only need to change the density, edit the fixture count instead.
• With Fixed Pixels distribution there are exactly as many fixtures as the spline has vertices, and stretching won't change that number. Fixtures are added and removed by editing the vertices with the Edit Spline tool. For more on distributions, see the articles Properties and Splines and Single Fixtures.

One more thing: fixtures pushed outside the layout by scaling stop receiving effects from it and stay dark. If the ends of a line go dark after stretching, check whether they still fall within the layout — see Creating and Modifying Layouts.

Rotation

1. Select fixtures. A frame with a rotation handle on the right will appear around them.
2. Click the rotation handle and drag it around the center of the frame. The fixtures rotate around the center of the frame, and the label next to it shows the current angle.
3. Release the button. The fixtures settle into their new position, and the handle returns to its place to the right of the frame.

The angle is measured from horizontal and resets to zero every time you grab the handle again: rotation always starts from the fixtures' current position, not their original orientation. To rotate the selection by exactly 90°, drag the handle along the arc until the readout shows 90.00.

Rotation snap. The toolbar has a Rotation Snap toggle with an angle field next to it. When snapping is on (it's on by default, with a 15° step), the rotation angle changes in multiples of the specified value — making it easy to set lines to exact angles like 15, 30, 45, or 90 degrees. Turn snapping off to rotate freely, to a precision of hundredths of a degree. The value in the field is an application-wide setting and is preserved between sessions.

Worth remembering:

• The center of rotation is the center of the selection frame — you can't set a different point. But you can shift the center: add one more fixture to the selection on the side you need, and the frame grows larger, moving the center in that direction.
• With snap to grid on, rotated fixtures are rounded to whole pixels. That's why a line set at a shallow angle ends up looking "stepped" on the field — this is normal behavior for a pixel field, not a bug. If you need a smooth diagonal, turn off snap to grid.
• After rotating, a spline is still a spline: its vertices rotate together with the fixtures, and the shape of the line doesn't change.
• Rotation can also be undone with Ctrl+Z.

Flipping

You can't mirror the selection using the corners of the frame — for that, the toolbar has two dedicated buttons: Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical. They're available with the Select and Move tool active, whenever at least one fixture is selected.

Flipping happens relative to the center of the selection, and the dimensions don't change. Pressing the same button again returns everything to how it was. Addresses stay tied to the same points on the line, so the direction the spline's fixtures run in flips along with the geometry: the first fixture ends up on the opposite side. If you only need to reverse the addressing order without touching the fixtures' placement, use the Reverse command in the Properties window — see Properties.

When You Need an Exact Size

There are no numeric width and height fields for fixtures on the mapping — size is set with the mouse. Precision is achieved through other means.

• Snap to Grid — the simplest way: all coordinates become whole pixels after scaling and rotation.
• Coordinates in the corner of the Mapping window show the cursor's position in field pixels — handy for nudging the edge of a selection to an exact value. Turn them on via the View → 2D Mapping → Coordinates menu.
• Arrow keys move the selection by 1 pixel, Shift+arrows by 10. This is movement, not scaling, but it's convenient for aligning a line that's already been stretched.
• The Fixture Count of an even-distribution spline in the Properties window sets density more precisely than stretching does.
• Duplicate on the toolbar creates copies of the selection with exact X Offset and Y Offset values — when you need a row of identical lines at a set distance, this is more reliable than scaling by hand.

The size and rotation of an effect are a separate matter — they're configured not here, but in the effect settings window (the gear button in the effect's properties), see Effect Settings. Fixtures and effects live independently: stretching the fixtures only changes which part of the animation lands on them.

Troubleshooting

No scale or rotation handles. Either the wrong tool is active — the frame only appears with Select and Move — or a single fixture is selected: it only has a move square.

The frame only stretches in one direction. The selection is flat — all the fixtures lie on a single strictly horizontal or vertical line. A frame like that has no second dimension.

Fixtures jump by whole pixels. Snap to Grid is active on the toolbar — turn it off.

Rotation jumps in steps. Rotation Snap is on. Turn it off, or set a different angle in the field next to it.

Stretched a spline, but no fixtures were added. That's expected: scaling neither creates nor removes fixtures. Their number is set in the Properties window (even distribution) or by the number of the spline's vertices (fixed pixels).

A copy of the fixtures appeared instead of moving them. Ctrl was held down while grabbing the center square — that duplicates the selection. Undo with Ctrl+Z.

Fixtures stopped lighting up after scaling. They most likely moved outside the layout. Move them back.

See also

• Mouse, Selection, and Movement
• Toolbar
• Splines and Single Fixtures
• Adding Splines and Fixtures
• Properties
• Patching Fixtures
• Effect Settings