What I mean to say regarding the DMX personalities is that the core set of parameters that appear in all 3 personalities are shifted downwards each time there is a personality with more DMX parameters, and things can get confusing if you think you are in one personality and you are running another.
So if you look at advanced splitter DMX personality, the DMX addresses for output 1 are as follows (assuming start address is 001)
1- X Gain
2- X Offset
3- Y Gain
4- Y Offset
5- Red Gain
6- Green Gain
7- Blue Gain
8- X State
9- Y State
10- Swapped
When you switch to 1 input router, then it looks like this:
1- X State
2- Y State
3- Swapped
4- Red Map
5- Green Map
6- Blue Map
7- X Gain
8- X Offset
9- Y Gain
10- Y Offset
11- Red Gain
12- Green Gain
13- Blue Gain
The problem here is if I want to switch personalities, I have to re-patch where the X-Gain parameter goes in my DMX lighting controller for each personality type. A potential problem is if I had the lighting desk set for 1 input router and the device is set for advanced splitter, unexpected things could happen when I bring up levels. A better method is to keep the parameters that are common to all personalities within the same range of DMX addresses. This way the 1 input router personality would look like this:
1- X Gain
2- X Offset
3- Y Gain
4- Y Offset
5- Red Gain
6- Green Gain
7- Blue Gain
8- X State
9- Y State
10- Swapped
11- Red Map
12- Green Map
13- Blue Map
And 2 input router would look like this:
1- X Gain
2- X Offset
3- Y Gain
4- Y Offset
5- Red Gain
6- Green Gain
7- Blue Gain
8- X State
9- Y State
10- Swapped
11- Red Map
12- Green Map
13- Blue Map
14- X Source
15- Y Source
16- R Source
17- G Source
18- B Source
In this manner, I always know that the first 10 DMX addresses always do the same thing no matter what personality I am running.
The way that lighting desks work, this would be a far more straightforward approach to patching.
Hope that makes sense from a lighting designer perspective!