Groups are a new organisational tool that give you greater flexibility and precision when working with fixtures inside a space. Use groups to create distinct sets of fixtures that make sense for your design. That could be groups for each section of a room (seating, workspace, circulation), or groups for each aspect of lighting in an area (spotlights, cove lighting, floor lamps). Groups can easily be configured within Express and are supported in software versions 2.0.0 and later. This article covers everything you need to know about using groups in Express.
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What are Groups?
A group can contain any set of fixtures that belong to the same space, and each fixture can belong to multiple groups. This allows you to build groups for different design requirements.
Groups are useful for focused programming and targeted overrides. When programming a scene, groups can be used to make quick selections of fixtures, and touch devices can be configured to offer override controls for each group.
Groups can be accessed and controlled directly from Express, as well as through the controller’s HTTP API and Simple Ethernet API for external system integration.
Two ways to create a group
Using the Add Items menu
- Select a space in which you wish to create your group.
- Click ‘Add items’ in the tools menu.
- Select ‘Group’ from the list and click ‘Create empty group’ to create a new group inside the space (if you have already made a fixture selection, you can choose ‘Create group from selection’).
- Once created, the group can be customised using the property editor on the right-hand side of the window.
Using the right-click context menu
- Select the fixtures you want to add to a group.
- Right-click a selected fixture and select ‘Grouping’ from the context menu followed by ‘Create group from selection‘.
- Once created, the group can be customised using the property editor on the right-hand side of the window.
Group properties
Every group has the following properties:
- Name – Set a custom name or use the default (e.g. Group 2).
- Number – Assign a group number to help organise and reference groups.
- Colour – Choose a colour label for quick identification throughout your project.
Under the Properties dropdown, you’ll find additional details:
- Space – The parent space containing the group.
- Fixture count – The total number of fixtures currently in the group.
From here, you can quickly select all fixtures in the group using the ‘Select Fixtures’ button.
Using groups in scenes
Groups are especially useful when programming static and dynamic scenes. While editing a scene, click the group to select all of its fixtures. By selecting a group, you can easily apply programming only to the fixtures you want; whether that’s colour, intensity, effects, or extended parameters.
Timeline scenes
Groups let you focus your programming on precisely the fixtures required for your timeline scenes. Each group is available as a row in the timeline, and presets placed on the group’s row will apply only to the fixtures in that group. Groups are higher in the timeline than their containing space, meaning group programming takes precedence over space programming.
Using groups with touch devices
Express Touch 5, Express Touch 8 and the Express Touch mobile app can be configured to offer overrides at a group level. Individual pages for intensity override, tuneable white override and colour override can be toggled from the‘Pages’ section of the configure device interface helper.
These override controls are accessed on the touch device by navigating to spaces, then selecting the name of the desired group.
For more information regarding touch interface configuration, read our dedicated help documentation.
Using groups with API overrides
For advanced users configuring Express with external systems, overrides can be applied directly to groups via the controller’s HTTP and Simple Ethernet APIs, enabling reliable third-party integration. For more information on these, consult the relevant API documentation using the links below.
