Presets
Presets (also known as palettes or focus groups in other consoles) are the essential building block for fast programming as well as efficient editing of cues. Presets are divided into functional parameter groups like "Color" or "Gobo" to break fixtures into their logical parts.
Presets can contain fixture values, timing values and effects values.
All of these are referenced into a cue so that updating the preset will change the resulting playback wherever it was used, making adjustments easy to accomplish.
What I really mean to say is "Always use Presets - they will save your sanity when the client walks in and you need to adjust the "Blue" which you recorded into 200 cues!".
Presets are by default specific to a parameter group, but that can be overridden so they contain as many parameters as desired by the user.
Many experienced programmers spend almost the same amount of time creating their presets as programming actual cues. Think of Presets as the many different colors and shapes of building blocks that allow fast assembly once all the parts are in place.