# ETC Ion Magic Sheets



## Thomas Johnston (Sep 13, 2014)

Hello All,

I was wondering if someone would be able to tell me how to make a Magic Sheet on the ETC Ion. We recently bought the ion, and I am not yet familiar with Creating A Magic Sheet. We do have a house plot, and I have heard that, that would make it easier. Can someone please give me some help? (Step By Step, Video, Help)


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## sashapixie (Sep 13, 2014)

Here is a video that may help: Eos v2.0 Software: . 

The second half is all about Magic Sheets.


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## SteveB (Sep 13, 2014)

Thomas Johnston said:


> Hello All,
> 
> I was wondering if someone would be able to tell me how to make a Magic Sheet on the ETC Ion. We recently bought the ion, and I am not yet familiar with Creating A Magic Sheet. We do have a house plot, and I have heard that, that would make it easier. Can someone please give me some help? (Step By Step, Video, Help)



To be honest it's on one hand fairly easy to learn the MS edit section on Nomad is fairly straight forward. On the other hand, you can get very sophisticated and complex with the functions. 

This ETC pdf helps, as well there's the ETC Forums here: http://community.etcconnect.com/

And Facebook has an ETC Eos Family Programmers page. Search for Magic Sheets, as there's a lot of very smart people contributing.


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## Alex I (Oct 23, 2014)

I have an ETC Ion controlling a basic rep plot. I am looking to create a new magic sheet on our Ion, and after watching as many videos as possible (there are few), it does not seem like there are any helpful instructions for how to go about setting up a magic sheet relatively quickly and easily. Changes also seem to be difficult. For example, creating an array (otherwise known as a group, or position, on a conventional magic sheet...) seem cumbersome. It does not seem like there is a way to undo alignment changes, and the spacing numbering seems to have no effect.
Basically, if anyone has any helpful hints on how to quickly set up a useful magic sheet, please share your experience and what you did!


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## Lafalot (Oct 24, 2014)

Maybe the attached will help some.


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## SteveB (Oct 24, 2014)

Alex I said:


> I have an ETC Ion controlling a basic rep plot. I am looking to create a new magic sheet on our Ion, and after watching as many videos as possible (there are few), it does not seem like there are any helpful instructions for how to go about setting up a magic sheet relatively quickly and easily. Changes also seem to be difficult. For example, creating an array (otherwise known as a group, or position, on a conventional magic sheet...) seem cumbersome. It does not seem like there is a way to undo alignment changes, and the spacing numbering seems to have no effect.
> Basically, if anyone has any helpful hints on how to quickly set up a useful magic sheet, please share your experience and what you did!



As for the Undo function, when you are in the Edit mode, there's a little green arrow on the lower left of the screen. Hit that often, as in a lot. It captures the last editing keystrokes and enables the Nomad/Console Undo button to know where to undo to.


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## Alex I (Oct 24, 2014)

SteveB said:


> As for the Undo function, when you are in the Edit mode, there's a little green arrow on the lower left of the screen. Hit that often, as in a lot. It captures the last editing keystrokes and enables the Nomad/Console Undo button to know where to undo to.


Any suggestions on alignment? The culprit seems to be align center. Once an 'array' is aligned center, all units are on top of each other and all the other aligns no longer seem to move around the units based on their alignment (align right, left, top, middle, bottom basically all do nothing)


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## RickA (Nov 12, 2014)

Alex I said:


> Any suggestions on alignment? The culprit seems to be align center. Once an 'array' is aligned center, all units are on top of each other and all the other aligns no longer seem to move around the units based on their alignment (align right, left, top, middle, bottom basically all do nothing)



When you click on "align center," it aligns the centers vertically. What you wanted is "align middle" instead which aligns the middles horizontally. You could use "align top" or "align bottom" as well. The problem is the words "center" and "middle" do not inherently convey direction, but they are used differently. If you look at the little arrows, it shows how the items will be pushed. 

What you have done by aligning the centers of items which were aligned horizontally already is place them all on top of each other as their center point of all the items was moved left or right to the same center of all the items. The same thing would happen if you had a vertical row of items and aligned them middle.


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