thanks for that puma, the need for having hardware driven pwm is because i shall be driving LED's directly by MOSFETs and need the constant PWM to act as a brightness control hence running more efficently espically with the number of leds im driving rather than having to dissipate the excess unneeded power as in analogue outs with power transistors. using the software outputs dwayne has the disadvantage that because im using RS485 communications between pics is that if i have any errors in timing then i'll loose the software pulses and it'll be blackout! i.e. i have a time out loop to carry out other communications tasks, as well as a display and controls for the 3 sets of RGB leds's
thanks for your help

Chris