Hi, I think this is my first post in here. What I’d like to know is if in the current VCV Rack version, it is possible to have multiple template patches? I only see the possibility to use one, the one that opens, when you click NEW. And if yes, how could I do that?
Thanks in advance
Instead of opening VCV then being presented with THE template, if you have a collection of premade patches, Template01.vcv, Template02.vcv, etc., then you can open any one you want by double-clicking that template.
I believe there was talk of multiple template patches for v2.
I’ve never mentioned a feature like this for Rack v2.
I recommend @artola’s solution.
I would also recommend a solution like this,
if one wants to be more specific, the template patches could be named like:
Template_ambient, Template_electro, Template_beat … etc.
and you can have a folder with just the templates anywhere on your hdd
Ok then it seems what I want doesn’t exist in VCV Rack. The solution you offer, if I understood it well, is then more like a few VCV patches that I consider as a template? I would have to open them and immediately “Save as” to make sure I don’t overwrite them, right?
You did actually:
You really just try to misinterpret everything I say as much as possible, right? Do you know how annoying that is?
My comment you linked was referring to demo patches to be included in Rack. After Rack v2’s source code and development builds are released, I will announce a contest for Rack users to submit patches to be included with Rack. Winning patches will be included in a “demo” folder for new users to learn from. They are unrelated to Rack’s “template” functionality, which loads a particular patch when the user clicks “File > New”.
Apologies for reviving this long-dormant thread, but I am very new here and trying myself to get some basic groundwork accomplished. My system is running OS Sonoma, by the way.
Following artola’s suggestion, I created a basic template for myself and named it accordingly,
Hoping to protect the template against accidental alterations, I opened the file’s INFO pane and gave it the Stationery Pad attribute.
However it doesn’t appear that giving the template file the Stationery Pad attribute produces the expected result of prompting a “Save As…” upon open.
Has anyone else tried this?
Again, apologies for such a basic inquiry. I was trying to locate a folder for template files but I now understand from this thread that the best way to establish optional templates is to adopt a naming convention as described here. Which is fine – I just don’t want to mess up and overwrite mine! (Thus I suppose it’s time to recall the wisdom that “With great power comes great responsibility”)
o-2k
HIlarious thread.
This is really just a basic “do stuff on a computer” task. Nothing to do with VCV.
Save your patch however you like, make a backup copy elsewhere, then make a backup of the backup. And there are your “templates”.
You will overwrite your “template” file within the default save folder for patches. This always happens. Well, almost always. Then you say “oh, crap, where did I save those backups?”
If it helps, the default folder for patches on Mac in Rack 2 is:
/HardDrive/Users/Username/Library/Application Support/Rack 2/patches
Where HardDrive and Username are specific to your device.
Use Selections. They are essentially templates. You can save an empty patch as the default template to make this usage a little cleaner.
This is how I would do this. Selections are a very useful feature of VCV.
Thank you! I can’t seem to find information about Selections in the manual, can you please point the way?
I see the option to import one in the file menu, but I don’t know how to create one.
I tried simply copying some of my “template”-style patches into the Selections folder but that didn’t yield the desired result – when I tried to import one, they appeared as grey’d out and could not be chosen.
Thanks!
OK, I think I see…
“Import Selection…” brings a saved group of modules into an existing patch – rather than opening an entire patch, and various sets of module combinations can be easily accessed in this way.
Perfect, thank you very much!
o-2k
I think the OP’s goal is to save time when he starts building a new patch.
In this case, selections provide another way of organizing pre-wired modules.
In this scenario, a single template is used to hold only the modules needed for making connections to the world outside the rack, e.g. audio input and output for a given audio device, MIDI inputs and outputs for a set of given MIDI controllers.
Everything else is pre-wired in selections, e.g. one or more mixing selections, selections ready for sequencing, selections for specific oscillators and filters, selections for effect modules, and so on.
I find using selections more flexible than using different startup-templates. Maybe give it a try and see if it fits your needs 
I totally agree that selections in VCV Rack are incredibly useful and could be used far more often. A keyboard shortcut to initiate import would be nice.
If anyone would like to make their selections available to others, please feel free to post them in the Share your patch selections (.vcvs) thread.
I am actually thinking about adding more granularity to that thread, e.g. by adding subdivisions such as ‘voices (audio)’, ‘effects (audio)’, ‘gates’, ‘sequences’, ‘modulation (CV)’, mixing etc.
What do you think?
hello, i would find it very useful and handy to search by category.
Yes – that’s exactly the scenario I inquired about.
Being so brand new to All Things Modular, it’s been helpful to rebuild every new patch from scratch because that really embeds the basics like nothing else.
As that work begins to feel redundant, I feel like I can start to move on to taking other concepts on board and make shorter work of the setup stage.
It’s an interesting question. On one hand, as I move through the Difficult Early Going, I’m slowly getting the sense that the Essence Of Modular (or maybe, An essence…?) is the “there are no rules”- style malleability of landscape. On that account, one might be well advised to be aware of a downside that’s always inherent with any “repetition of convenience.”
On the other hand, it’s kind of like setting up for any analog recording session – sure, there’s a dozen ways to route the same signal, or achieve some other desired result.
But established modalities don’t deserve the heave-ho simply because they’re there, and a hundred years of recording sessions has shown us that there can be benefits to “doing it like they did it before” in certain matters.
(Of course, as I say that, I’m also fully aware that there’s no clock on the wall here at the tension headache studio… 
)
o-2k
[on-topic]
If you want to go with full patches as “templates”, make a copy on your file system into a backup folder before you start patching to prevent overriding/loosing your “templates”.
[maybe-off-topic]
You can also “do it like VCV were hardware”. A couple of years ago I had a 2 row modular and I never changed this rack.
I had a lot of fun, especially doing 3-modules-challenges.
