User guide for lighting console

Sabre was approached by Avolites Ltd to write the user manual for their new Sapphire 2000 console after Steve Warren of Avo had read the Abstract CE controller manual and liked it. However, the Sapphire is just a little bit more complicated than the Abstract controller, and is used by top lighting people worldwide.

Previous Avolites manuals had always been written by users (the Diamond manual was written by Pat Marks, LD of Status Quo, while on a European tour!), so we set out to become experienced users of the Sapphire, taking one out on a range of events, to make sure we addressed all the problems that users might face.

The resulting manual was about 100 pages long, most pages including step-by-step guides and pictures. The manual has a fairly humorous style but at the same time tries to present all necessary information clearly. (Usually the user is under some stress by the time they refer to the manual!) The manual also had to be a relatively small file to allow downloading from the Avolites web site for those users in the more far-flung parts of the world, so we used a few tricks to keep the file size down.

Avolites were very pleased with the result and we have also written several other documents for them. User feedback has also been good.

You can download the manual and read it for yourself at www.avolites.com.