it would save a lot of time if I could set Dorico in Layout Options–>Staves and Systems–>Casting Off not only the “Fixed no. of bars/system” to “4”, but (with this already invoked) also set Dorico to automatically group (for example) from measure 149 in the following example through just before rehearsal #8 ALSO onto a single system (as would commonly be done):
I’m about to print a big band score and find myself having to do this for every single part automatically, which doesn’t feel very Dorico-like (my two cents!)
I would also suggest… and what frustrates me more than what you’re pointing out perhaps… is that when casting off in groups of 4 bars, that multi-measure rests should count as the number of bars in the multi–measure rest, not as 1 bar! That defeats the purpose of casting off in 4 bar increments. In other words currently the way it works is if you have for example two bars of notes followed by three bars of rests followed by another 3 bars of music and have Dorico set to cast off in 4 bar increments Dorico will put bars 1, 2, 3-5 (as a single three bar multi-measure rest) and 6 on the first system and bars 7 and 8 on the second system. What it SHOULD do is put bars 1, 2, 3-4 (as a TWO bar multi-measure rest) on the first system and bars 5 (as a single bar of rest), 6, 7 and 8 on the second system.