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I've settled on grouping by voice sets, not by having a row of oscillators, a bank of envelopes...
I did that at first, but now my clocks are grouped together up in the left corner, and audio/midi io in the lower left.
But I try to have modules in the middle near each other that I can link with
those little yellow doepfer wires as reasonable "defaults".
I also need less wires using Doepfer's CV and trigger bus lines in three of the groupings.

I sort of see it as: here's my bass and percussion sections, this group does keys, this row is guitar/lead,
and this is the mix to output. I can always cross patch to oblivion, but I don't have to every time I sit down to record.
Oh, and the Doepfer A-180-9 Multicore works great for interconnecting boxes.

My eyes are messed up with strabismus so I get lost in the weeds when wires are draped everywhere.
Not a kid now I guess, but I don't like wire balls anymore like I used to.
I believe neither did Alan R. Perlman's designs, compared to Moog and Buchla.
(latest build plan here)

EDITED Yesterday, 17:47

A pretty sounding and low-hp module is the 2hp pluck.
It's 4 note polyphonic, has an interesting range of tones, and leaves you lots of rack room.
They are always a pain to tune because of the fiddly knobs and 2hp stuff is kinda cheap because they're cheap.
More than three 2hp modules in a rack is rarely worth suffering with their fit and control.

But... feeding it into mavis' external in can make for some astonishingly beautiful arpeggios.
Two plucks together is also nice. For tonal variety, add a 2hp bell.
The 3 together have provided me some "wow" moments where you have to just stop, listen, and smile.
cornishe_excerpt This is Pamela's Pro Workout -> A-156 QNT ->PluckPluckBell + Mavis into a Monsoon to stereo out.

Add a Doepfer A-138 narrow mixer to corral them, or you could add a Doepfer A-138s mini stereo mixer.
You'll also need a mult of some sort. The Doepfer A-182-1 stitchable mult
works great for this, adds 6hp more, and so now with pluck/pluck/bell/mixer/mult, we're still only
at 16 hp added and you've got lots of added fun.

I only wish that someone would make a unified PluckPluckBell with less twitchy tuning.

EDITED Friday May 17, 16:47

The video interface is intended for displaying the interface on an hdmi monitor, and it does that really well.
The video output is clean and records well. I wish that more/every manufacturer would provide that functionallity.

The video-art mode is low-res, unsupported, unfinished, and mostly undocumented (as of firmware v2.0).
I think Xor just thought it was an interesting hack, and kept what he had in the release, but it's sort of borked.
I got it to do some "things" but I was dissapointed I couldn't do basic drawing with it (draw a pixel/line at XY with this color).
It has a some potential, but also is limited by what the embedded video controller hardware is capable of.
Graphics mode also eats up one of the precious few tracks when using it for visuals.
Video synthesis it ain't, so don't buy it for that, but some audiences might enjoy seeing the tracker interface.

EDITED Feb 27th, 02:55

On Nerdseq, first get some patience because it's a bear to get a handle on 80% of the things it can do.
The company is just one (occasionally cranky) engineer, and the documentation is... challenging.

Instead of getting more modules to feed, I'd recommend getting a Doepfer A-185-2 Precision CV Adder.
It makes combining and tuning CVs from Nerdseq a lot easier than doing it in the Seq's interface.
Much fun to be had there adding CVs together.

NS does a lot with midi too, and I liked the price and footprint of Xor's 2hp midi in/out.
You get lot of utility for the 2hp of space it takes. I put it on a longer ribbon cable for ease of placement and it works great.
The Video/Keyboard works well if you think you need that, but it causes a bit of a ribbon cable rat's nest.
I have a CV-16 Expander, but it's very much a seperate device as far as programming it.
The high effort/reward ratio kept me from using it much and it's back on the shelf.

In all, NerdSeq is well made, reliable and if you need to spit out series of notes that you set up ahead of time,
it's a great choice, especially if you enjoy a tracker paradigm interface.

I just got a Frap Tools Usta today (so beautifully made) and I'm expecting that it and the NS will get along wonderfully.

http://noodlehut.bandcamp.com

EDITED Feb 27th, 02:00

the plan ^^

the build ^^

(yay!)

EDITED Jan 22nd, 18:42