Why don't instruments remain where I move them to in Setup?

Dorico
1

I searched the forum but got no results so I apologize if this has been discussed before.

I’m starting a concert band arrangement, re-engraving from a 1910 original for modern instruments, and I prefer to see the bassoon staff right below the oboe, and the horn staff (or if there are multiple horn staves, all of them) below the trumpets. But as soon as I enter an instrument which I want below the bassoon staff, such as the clarinets and saxophones, the bassoon insists on moving down below them all instead of remaining where I drag it to. The same happens with the horns. Adding a trumpet player or three and then adding a horn player, the horn player jumps up above the trumpets. If I drag it down, every new instrument I enter moves the bassoon and the horn staves to where I don’t want them to be.
Once I get to Write mode, they stay where I moved them to but I would like to move them once in Setup mode and have them stay where I move them to.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance for any help with this.

2

One of the new features in version 4 is automatic ordering of instruments according to standard conventions for either Orchestra or Band.

You can set the ordering to “None” if you want your own order, by holding down (or right-clicking) on the “Sort Players” button at the bottom of the Players panel.

3

Thank you very much! There is so much to learn about this program – I’m very grateful for this forum!

4

Is there any way to set the default to “none”? I typically add players in the order I want them to appear. It’s frustrating when they “auto-sort” and I need to turn sorting off, then manually move players back into the desired position.

5

As @benwiggy said, if you click the sort icon in Setup you can set the order to None.

6

Yes, that’s how we have to do things now, but that’s an extra step to remember. Dorico seems to start up in orchestral sorting by default, and he was asking if we could somehow change that in preferences so that by default when we start a new project in Dorico the “none” would be how things would be.
I don’t see any setting that can be changed for that in the Preferences, so it seems that the sort order can’t be other than “orchestra” by default. So we just need to remember to take that extra step when starting a new project.

7

If you save a project template with the sort order set to none, that setting is preserved.

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