Patch changing in custom rules

[AndyR]

Hi all,
I'm completely new to Notion 3 and although I'm starting to get the hang of things now, there's a couple of things, (at the moment), I can't see how to do. I use Kontakt 4 and arrange my instruments into banks of articulations, each bank having it's own MIDI channel and each articulation it's own patch. e.g. my string bank is on MIDI channel 1
and 'sustain' is patch 0, pizzicato is patch 1 and spiccato is patch 3, etc. I've used Sibelius for years and it was the only reliable way of playing articulations.

I have three computers each running Kontakt and play them via my LAN, so I would use the Notion 3 external MIDI outputs, playing through IPMidi. I've yet to get the prules file to work yet, but that's just finger trouble. The main problem is that I can't see a 'change patch' playback instruction in the custom rules, without which my system won't work.

I've noticed that the VST plugin system uses channels rather than patches. I hope than is not the only way it can operate. If so I would have to completely re-program Kontakt to use keyswitches and I've got a lot of instruments. (I use my own orchestra which I've assembled from various sources over the years. )

The other thing. If the external MIDI outputs (A,B,C & D) have different rules, how do you accomadate them: can you combine the files into one using the different plugin/MIDI IDs or have four separate prules files with different names.

I'd be grateful if anyone could lend a hand.

Thanks,

Andy.