Unmanaging a Controller

[Gilrock]

Haven't messed with my controller setup since 2019 showtime since I took last year off.  I'm having one of those "What the f*** happened to the program" moments.  I'm only trying to run one controller that runs my rooflines.  Its a J1SYS P12D.  It has 12 outputs and I'm used to running it with one universe per output.  In the controllers tab when I pick that controller the "Managed" box is checked and cannot be unchecked.  The word Managed is greyed out.  I can't find any way to uncheck it.  At first I said ok let me see if it will just upload the config how it wants but it fails saying I got too many outputs on port 5.  My guess is it can't handle the fact that I have some PolyLine models with multiple segments but even though its 3 segments the model needs to exist on one output/port.

I found somewhere that said all controllers must be on their own universe to be managed.  So I said fine I'll create a dummy controller on the same universe.  That worked now it says its unmanaged.  So I go to manually set the start channels and even though the Controller field says "Use start channel" the Start Channel field is greyed out and I couldn't change it.  I finally figured out if I toggle the Controller to "_ethernet" and back to "Use start channel" it unlocks the Start Channel field so I could change it.

Then I said ok maybe I didn't need to make it unmanaged to change the start channel I just needed to do that trick.  So I deleted the dummy controller and my controller switched back to say it was managed.  Now I notice on the models that the Controller field is gone but I can edit the start channels.  So before I did all this the problem was my Start Channel field was greyed out and there was no Controller field to toggle to unlock the Start Channel field.

Just seems like there are some things messed up regarding which fields are displayed and locked to the user when trying to switch between automatic and manual control.  And why couldn't I uncheck the managed box on the controller?

[Gilrock]

I finally got my stuff sorted but it took digging into the code to figure out what can cause some of the fields to disappear on the Controllers tab and in the Model parameters in the Layout tab.  I had models where the "Controller" field was missing and I couldn't get it back.  I had controllers on the Controller tab where the "Auto Size" field was gone and couldn't figure out how to get it back even though I deleted all models from the controller.  I also started a new blank show folder and found I got different fields when creating the exact same type of controller so there seems to be things that trigger fields to disappear and then its not always clear how to get them back.  I still don't know what "Managed" means but it doesn't seem to have any bearing on anything.  The magic setting that got me going seemed to be selecting the "Auto Layout Models" checkbox.  I initially was reluctant to choose that option because I needed to pick the ports where my models go not let xLights do it automatically so the name steered me away from selecting it.  I think I'd be more in favor of some of these fields never disappearing but instead going grey and then a tooltip that would explain to the user why its deactivated and how get it back.