The pack list is where LED wall jobs are actually won or lost. The wall design can be perfect and the show still stalls because the truck arrived without the right hanging bars, or four shackles short. This is what goes on the list, and how each quantity is derived rather than remembered.
Start with the wall itself — columns × rows — then add spares. The working ratios are about 5% for a one-off show with a minimum of two, and about 10% for a tour with a minimum of four, because a touring rig cannot cross-hire a replacement tile in a strange city on a Sunday.
Spares are not only tiles. Carry spare receiving cards and power supplies, roughly one of each per 25 panels, since those are the components that fail and both are field-replaceable in minutes.
Hanging bars, or bumpers, come in fixed widths — commonly one, two and three panels wide — and a shop owns a fixed number of each. The real planning question is not "how many bumpers does this wall need" but "can the wall be covered from what we own", combining widths and accepting a wider bar hung over fewer columns where it fits.
Then per rigging point: hoists, steels, spansets and shackles. A common starting rule is one point per three metres of wall width with a minimum of two, one tonne hoists, and a consistent hardware set per point.
Check the point load: wall weight divided by points, with a dynamic factor of about 1.2, and compare against the hoist rating. Every one of these figures must be verified by a competent rigger before anything leaves the ground — the arithmetic is a planning aid, not a substitute for the person responsible for the rig.
From the circuit count comes the feeder line count and the distro count. From the panel and string count comes the jumper count. Add roughly 10% spare on jumpers.
On data: one home run per data run, cut long enough for the run distance plus the wall height plus a service loop of about five metres — the loop that stops a cable being exactly, agonisingly, half a metre short. Panel-to-panel data jumpers roughly match the panel count, again plus 10%.
Panels travel in dollies, typically six to eight tiles each. Cables go in trunks, roughly sixty cables per trunk. Bumpers get their own cases; rigging hardware gets its own trunk. Add up the cases, allow about half a square metre of deck each, divide by trailer width, and you have a linear-metre estimate to give the trucking company.
And the consumables that never make it onto a spreadsheet but stop the show if missing: gaff, velcro, zip ties, spare hardware, and a marker that works.
Every quantity above follows from the wall geometry, the rig method and what the shop owns. That is precisely why it should be computed rather than recalled at midnight before a load-in — and why a list that is 95% right is not good enough, because the missing 5% is what stops the show.
RigPlan does this arithmetic for you. Enter the wall once and it derives panels and spares, rigging from your own stock, circuits, the data wiring plan and the full pack list — free, no sign-up.
Open the calculatorAbout 5% of the wall for a one-off show (minimum two panels) and about 10% for a tour (minimum four), plus spare receiving cards and power supplies at roughly one per 25 panels.
A common planning rule is one point per three metres of wall width, with a minimum of two. Point loads must be checked against hoist ratings and verified by a competent rigger.
Cut home runs to the run distance plus the wall height plus roughly five metres of service loop, so cables reach the top of the wall with slack for dressing and strain relief.