Hi everyone,
 
I'm moving from Music Creator 6 to Cakewalk by Bandlab.
 
Music Creator has screensets.  I found screensets to be an easy way to move between screens in a project.
 
Cakewalk by Bandlab has both screensets and lenses.  I haven't figured out what lenses gives me that screensets do not.  I just don't get it.

Screensets are project based - i.e. they are specific to the project you're working on.
 
Lenses are global and can be applied to any project, so you don't need to recreate them each time.
 
In some respects you could see Lenses as a set of Screenset templates you can use on any project... they're not really, but you can use them that way.
 
M.

Further to msmcleod's post, Screensets deal with the layout of you "windows" or Views, if you will.  Lenses affects the full screen, if you will.  That is, you can customize your Control Bar (tool sets) for specific uses, so the tool bar can show different tool modules per your preference such as when editing audio you may want to show tool modules that relate to that and those that you find usefull without cluttering up the Control Bar with things like the (MIDI) Events module, etc.  I wish I could just use Screensets for this purpose, but I have not been given the privlege and access of making such changes to the program.
 
Kind regards,
 
tecknot

What I don't understand is why they wouldn't make one of those two just have all of the features of both?
 
I really don't use either because I found that the setup and usage of them was more trouble than the benefit that I got from them.  It doesn't really bother me that all of the tools are always available.  Otherwise, I'll just have to switch lenses to get to those tools in the cases where I might need them anyway.
 
And as for screensets, I tried to use them a few times but found them a bit fiddly to get just right and again, ended up where I would want to add one of the screens from a different screenset to the one I was in and ended up either bouncing back and forth so much or just going back to a see all view that it was more work to use them than not to.
 
It didn't help that there were several changes in a few of the updates that made each one change in ways that made whatever I DID understand about them too fluid with changes that came out to make them better that really seemed more like features that were released before they were ready - kind of like how the comping has changed a number of times in ways that are confusing and different in a not-necessarily-better, but different way - TO ME.
 
Could be that I just don't know what I'm talking about. :)

To me, the whole screenset/lenses thing is my go-to example of when CW devs went off the rails for a bit. I realise not everyone is the same, or has the same needs, but personally I find them annoying and/or confusing. To double-down on a (my opinion) badly implemented feature (screensets) with a second, incompatible feature (lenses) is just... inexplicable. Not great engineering.
 
So, I just ignore them. The features, I mean. I pretend they don't exist.

Lenses are a superset of screensets and encapsulate the look and feel of the entire application. You can literally show and hide feature sets using lenses which is impossible to do with screensets.
Lenses store information at the feature level as well as UI level, so you can hide certain featuresets that you would never use and all commands and menu items for those would be hidden when that lens is chosen. You can also use it to customize views and control bar visibility etc.
This help topic may be useful. 

Noel, thanks, I'll give that topic a read.

I love the Lenses feature. I never really became totally comfortable with Sonar before Lenses. It allowed me to customize the screen for my purposes, and also eliminate things that i had no use for and felt were visual clutter. But if needed restoring all of those features was merely a click away. Great customization tool.

Meh. I always find myself wanting MORE properties to be shown instead of less. Adding a feature that literally "takes away" features is kind of weird unless you're new and want all the stuff you don't understand hidden...but then you have to learn how to do that which is a little moebius'ian (ha)
 
Screensets can be helpful but with the dock, inspector, and browser so easily brought up and hidden there's not as much need for it. I remember SAW+ way back in the day, which was far more window driven, and the had a simply elegant system for view mgmt using the F keys. It was sublime.
 

Meh. I always find myself wanting MORE properties to be shown instead of less.

I'm with you.  Although I find the CbB interface somewhat cluttered now that I've gotten used to looking at the Studio One 3 GUI (to each his own here, I suppose), I rarely want to REMOVE functions.  I might want them to be more accessible, better placed, or at least out of the way until I have the context to use them, but I generally don't want them to be unavailable until I use another screen to see them.  Just seemed like I was always jockeying around to figure out "where the hell that button went". :)