Stripboard: building and working with strips

The stripboard is the heart of scheduling in Cinapse. It's the digital version of the classic production board: a stack of color-coded strips, where each strip represents one scene (or one breakdown sheet). You arrange the strips into the order you plan to shoot them, group them into shooting days with day breaks, and Cinapse handles the day counts and scheduling math for you.

A few terms used throughout this article:

To add your first strip to the board, either click the "Add Strip" button in the middle of the screen, or select the plus (+) button in the Stripboard Panel header. Then enter the scene's information on the breakdown sheet that opens.

To rearrange strips, click, drag, and drop a strip into the order you want. You can also cut and paste individual strips or groups of strips to move them.

To add a Day Break, select the calendar + button in the Stripboard Panel header, just to the right of the plus sign. (For more on editing and styling day breaks, see the Day Breaks article.)

To add a Text Banner, select the "T" button in the Stripboard Panel header, to the right of the calendar icon. A window appears where you type your text and can optionally include an estimated time, useful for company moves, lunches, and changeovers. You can set the banner text's size, alignment, and color, as well as the banner color, in that same window.

Select the sort icon (arrows pointing up and down) at the top right of the Stripboard Panel. In the sort window you can sort all strips or only unscheduled strips: add a condition, choose it, and pick ascending or descending order. To remove a condition, select the trash can icon next to it.

Use the search bar at the top right of the Stripboard Panel header. You can search any built-in strip information (Scene, Episode, Set, and so on) or individual elements (a specific cast member, prop, etc.).

To select a range, hold Shift and click the first and last strip. To select strips that aren't next to each other, hold Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and click each one.

Right-click a strip (or a multi-selection) to open the strip menu:

A single Cinapse file can hold more than one stripboard, for example a master board plus separate block or unit boards. You manage and duplicate boards from the Stripboard Manager.

When you duplicate a board, if day-break details (like unit and day-count info) look blank or show a dash ("-") right after, just move any strip on the new board and the dates and day counts will recalculate and fill back in.

Scene numbers import correctly with the current Final Draft (FDX) importer. If a scene number ever doesn't appear on a strip, open the breakdown sheet, click into the scene number field, and press Tab to refresh it onto the strip.

The font on the stripboard view itself isn't customizable. Font is a report setting — when you generate a report, choose the font in Report settings. (See "Reports Manager.")

If a strip has a lot of cast IDs and they're being clipped, go to your Layout Manager, select the Cast cell, and change it from "Clip" to "Wrap." The cast IDs will then wrap onto as many rows as needed.

Multiple units are available on the Studio plan. When your production has more than one unit, every breakdown sheet, banner, day break, and unit break is assigned to a unit, and Cinapse keeps an independent day count for each unit. To show more than one unit on the same day, use the {Day # / Unit} option on your day breaks (Layout Manager > your layout > Day Breaks > {Day # / Unit}).

Go to the Calendar Manager and choose Mark as day off for the date you want.

You can't copy strips directly from one board to another. Instead, any strips that aren't scheduled on a stripboard are available in that board's Scrapyard — open the Scrapyard on the board you're building and pull the strips you need onto the schedule from there.