I started with Application Builder many years ago and then moved to System Builder when Crestron switched. I went thru the same thing you new guys went thru. Hard to find help at the yahoo group. Hard to even get help at Crestron because there aren't that many System Builder techs i guess.

This is what i can tell you from experience... You are wasting your time with wizard programming. All of the energy you are putting in to learning it will be worthless because you will reach a point where you simply cant do what you need to in System Builder and you will have to use a real programmer. What i mean is that as your skills improve and you do bigger and better jobs you wont be able to hack trick and work around to get what you want to have happen. Its not like with RTI where once you reach the end you have a valuable and complete skill set. With System Builder you reach the end and your still miles away from where you need to be.

If you plan to be the programmer then hire someone else to handle sales and installation and whatever and start taking classes. 15 year Crestron programmers are still taking classes. Its a full time job. If you plan to be the sales guy then outsource programming until you need to hire one. What you guys dont want to do is hand your clients a Crestron System that operates like an RTI system. This is what at least half the Crestron dealers do and its one of the reasons you hear nonsensical statements in the forums like "RTI or control4 can do anything Crestron can".

A good Crestron programmer can open up the sandbox and give you access to all of the available features. With System Builder i used to have 10 VTPro files for the same model touchpanel in a single system. I would have to go in and edit/trick/work around every menu in every file. When you skip the wizard programming you have 1 single VTPro file that you load to every touchpanel. Your working in separate applications and not waiting for everything to compile everytime you make a single change. And most importantly.. you can finally get answers to your questions because you are using the software that everyone else is using.