I have a question about fermatas or rests. I want to add a certain amount of space in the middle of a piece of music, but how can I do that? I don’t understand the meaning of the fermata properties item. Does it not show up in the performance? I’ve been cheating by inserting blank bars for now, but how can I do it smartly?
Hi @adagio4evergreen , to increase the silence you should increase the gap value of the fermata properties. You can increase it to 999!!! 
Here the result. You can observe what happens in the Tempo lane in Key editor. The hold value determines how long the note will be held, and sets a slower metronome number to obtain the prolongation; the note will also be shortened (but its length will be compensated by the slower metronome for the hold part of the note), to leave space for the gap (silence) after the hold has exhausted his duty), that you can define as you desire:
Example with gap set to 999 (but in this case is better to put the fermata on the barline, as you write in the following posts, or on a rest at the end of the bar, so you can have a fermata for the long note and a fermata for the rest that you can set as long as you desire) :
Here you can find and see the default values (the you can override in the properties panel from case to case as needed):
Here the Manual (this and following pages):
https://www.steinberg.help/r/dorico-pro/5.1/en/dorico/topics/notation_reference/notation_reference_holds_pauses/notation_reference_holds_pauses_playback_r.html
I tried it thinking that it might be the same as I expected, but it doesn’t show up in the performance. Is there some other setting I need to make? However, I placed a fermata on the bar line, so maybe that’s the reason? I haven’t looked at the tempo editor, so I’ll check it out.
@adagio4evergreen
Here a visual explanation, for example when the fermata is on the (next) barline. The gap works also on the barline (retroactively), but the note will sound the same length as written. So you can only change the gap value in the properties, if the fermata is on the barline:
I tried various things, but I managed to make it work, but it seems to have some quirks. First, it doesn’t seem to be generated if tempo information is already included. Second, the tempo information after the fermata generates a lower tempo than before, but for some reason I can’t fix this tempo properly. It worked fine if I entered this beforehand. Thank you for your advice.
I would be interested in checking your project, to see what is going on (“some quirks”), if you would like to post it here.