Event Production/Festival Design Wishlist

[AndrewYVR]

 

After working in Vectorworks for more than 5 years in the realm of event production and planning, I wanted to see if we could get updates/webinars for the following topics:

 

1. Portable toilet symbols (regular portable toilets and accessible portable toilet symbols which can be integrated into worksheet data for inventory) 

2. Tent Tool - Similar to any tool where you can customize each tent by length, width, height, style, wall numbers, and ballasting options (ie: walls on 3 sides or all 4). Also, be able to incorporate tent and wall counts into a worksheet for inventory. 

3. Event Fence Panel Tool - Similar to the current fence tool but for temporary fencing (ie: 6' panels, 8' panels, crush barricade, 4' panels etc.) It would be great to also be able to track each in a worksheet for inventory.

4. Webinar on how to integrate VectorWorks Landmark and Spotlight to create large outdoor festival base maps using ARCGis or similar mapping data in Vectorworks! Many event professionals create festivals/events in various nontypical event spaces such as parks, roadways etc. Since this type of base map data may not be available, it would be cool to learn how Vectorworks users can combine Landmark and Spotlight tools, to create proper outdoor base plans to build an event. 

 

Andrew 

 

 

 

[jschulman]

Hi Andrew. 

 

1. I spent many years working in event production, and I agree with you about portable toilet symbols. I made a few that lived in my personal library so I could count them as needed for festival work. I will add this request to the list.

2. In the past, I made tents from scratch. There are a few tents in the Resource Manager, but I agree that there could be more. We have discussed a tent tool before. I'll see where that is.

3. We were just talking about using the Fence tool with common barrier objects, like bike rack. I'd like to be able to draw a path and have the bike rack lay in along it.

4. This is a great idea! Let me speak to my Landmark counterparts and see what kind of joint webinar we can come up with. 

 

Thank you for these suggestions.

 

Josh

[AndrewYVR]

Thanks Josh for your response! 

 

I have made my own portable toilet symbols as well but it would be nice to have them standardized in the resource managers for anyone to use especially for those users who are new and want to be able to drop and go. 

 

The tent tool would be a game changer. Tents are one of those items that are always used in events. Understanding that not every tent can be captured in the tool but having the option to create simple and standard-size tents (ie: 10x10, 10x20, 20x20, 20x30) would greatly help speed up the drawing process. The way I see this tool working is similar to the "Door Tool" in VW. You can click the "Additional Settings" button at the top and then add in your parameters such as size, height, style, and wall location/size.

 

 Regarding the fence tool, you nailed down exactly what I think event profs need. Having to draw my own symbols and placing them in one by one or mirroring a set of panels, takes up quite a bit of time. Being able to draw one line and have the software fill it in based on standardized fence panel lengths would be awesome. Similar to the tent tool, having a customizable section (ie: fence panel length, height, foot configuration, even a scrim option) would be amazing to get accurate totals to suppliers.

 

For the webinar, it would be great to show users how to create base maps with both Google Maps imagery or ARC Gis map data. Depending on the area I find the ARC Gis imagery can be "iffy" in quality so having multiple options would be great! 

 

If you need, PM me and I would be more than happy to show you what I have done as a workaround to see if anything can be integrated! 

 

Best,

 

Andrew 

 

[JustinVanHassel]

@AndrewYVR @jschulmanI did a quick search or the RM by typing in restroom into the search field and returned two results for portable restrooms for events. There is a screenshot attached. All that is needed for inventory reporting is to add the EntEquipUniversal record to the symbol container and populate the fields to your liking.

 

For those who want to track this request the ticket in JIRA(our internal tracking system) is CD-4672. If you reach out to Vectorworks Tech Support give the CD# they can give an update on what is currently listed for the development of this issue and a possible release date. Of course, that could change depending on other factors.

[AndrewYVR]

Hey Justin,

 

Thanks for the reply. While these trailers are used on-site, what I was specifically referring to was porta potties. See below:

 

 

Every single outdoor event will rely on these for the public which is why I thought it would be great to have a symbol for both a regular porta potty (as depicted above) as well as an accessible version for the patrons that require wheelchair-accessible washrooms.

 

Best,

 

Andrew 

 

 

[JustinVanHassel]

Thank you for the clarification. Your notes have been added to the above ticket number in our system.

[Michael Ciccone]

Can't echo this enough. A significant portion of my job is festival planning and building site maps. I've invested a substantial amount of time building custom scripts & tools for things like capacity calculations by area & egress availability.. I've built custom symbols for portos, fencing, barricade and more.

 

An expansion of the tools available & integration of new ones for us site plan authors will be happily welcomed.

[AndrewYVR]

I agree Michael! Hopefully, we can get some updates from the wonderful VW team soon! 

 

 

[EAlexander]

I'd love if bike rack and crash barricades could work like the stanchion tool does.

 

Great list overall Andrew! 

[AndrewYVR]

Hey Evan!!!

 

That's the dream to be able to simply use a polyline to create long fence lines! Thanks for your comment! 

 

Andrew

 

 

[JustinVanHassel]

You can cheat drawing lines of bicycle rack using the fence tool with a workaround. You just have to convert the fence to unstyled and choose the Infill in the dialog as the Infill Barrier Movable symbol which is bicycle rack and remove all the posts from the settings, set the spacing to the length of the bicycle rack and set all the heights to zero in the settings. Once the fence object is inserted you have to Cmd+K to convert the fence into a group so you can delete the posts that insert by default. I just did this and inserted over 200' of bicycle rack in under 30 seconds.

[Matt Overton]

1 hour ago, JustinVH said:

You can cheat drawing lines of bicycle rack using the fence tool with a workaround. You just have to convert the fence to unstyled and choose the Infill in the dialog as the Infill Barrier Movable symbol which is bicycle rack and remove all the posts from the settings, set the spacing to the length of the bicycle rack and set all the heights to zero in the settings. Once the fence object is inserted you have to Cmd+K to convert the fence into a group so you can delete the posts that insert by default. I just did this and inserted over 200' of bicycle rack in under 30 seconds.

If you have a symbol, you want to lay out a regular spacing along a line, why not use the repetitive unit tool? 

[AndrewYVR]

I think both ideas work great! I created my own symbol and then I duplicate along pathway. That is my current workaround!