Setting Soft Limits

Soft limits (software limits) limit target positions in cues. These values, Min Rev Position and Max Fwd Position, only act on cued motion - you are still able to manually jog past these limits. Soft limits and hard limits should be used together to avoid overtravel.

Using the Local Controls section in the Jog Workspace drive the motor in the Reverse direction until it travels as far as you feel comfortable. This is often a good place to set your position to 0.

It is helpful to place a piece of spike tape on the stage floor to mark the motor’s physical position at the “0” location. This way if you lose position due to a power outage or something else, you have an easy place to Reset "0"

In the Position section of the Stagehand Properties Panel, enter “0” for the Min Rev Position, and then press Tab or click in another field to confirm the number. This will prevent you from accidentally writing cues less than 0.

Using the Local Controls section in the Jog Workspace, drive the motor in the Forward direction until it travels as far as you feel comfortable and plan to write cues for.

In the Position section of the Stagehand Properties Panel, enter your current motor position as the Max Fwd Position, which will prevent you from writing cues greater than the current motor position.

Soft Limits only prevent you from writing cues beyond this value, you still can jog your machines beyond these values. This is why you also need to set Hard Limits

If you jog past your Soft Limit, Spikemark will display a yellow limit arrow

In this example, we have jogged past the reverse soft limit