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VWspotlight vs AutoCAD


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I'm doing some research for my production department regarding which drafting program to purchase, and am looking for user feedback about Spotlight.

We are a 4 venue performing arts center with a 2500 seat proscenium theater, outdoor amphitheater, 2 black boxes of different dimensions, a gaggle of meeting/rehearsal rooms and a 900 seat partitionable ballroom. We do everything from broadway A tours to rotary luncheons.

We get our advance info in several different file formats, from autoCAD to .bmp's. Our lighting staff is split between vectorworks users and autoCAD users, and we've tried file converters and translators and none of them produced particularly good results. We're also looking at redrawing all of our venues to both update our techspecs and provide templates for us to create shows over.

I would appreciate any feedback, suggestions or comments about Spotlight's functionality for importing light plots (we get everything from lightwright to wysiwyg to obscure russian cad files) and exporting report information to lightwright.

Thank you very much!

Miguel

Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, West Palm Beach FL

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I'm the LD at a PAC (NYC area) and also get advance info from events coming in, and I've yet to see anything in other then Adobe or Vectorworks.

Note that we are not building shows (carpentry) so are not going to see construction plans. Most of the info we get sent is basic ground plan and band layout (variety acts) and light plots. The larger Light Plots from dance and musicals are almost always in VW if they're not in Adobe, and almost always, if I call and ask, were drafted in VW.

I've actually seen an increase in the past 2 years in plots done in VW and am comfortable saying that VW is the program of choice for LD's.

SB

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Miguel-

As the ALD down at Florida Grand Opera in Miami, I deal with the same sort of headaches that you mention. FGO has both Autocad 2005 and Vectorworks Spotlight 11.5. Except for the designers that still use pencil and paper, most of our designers work in Vectorworks, but one or two work in AutoCad.

Like Steve B. mentioned, I have found that almost all lighting designers (especially the ones working out of NYC) use Vectorworks.

Though sometimes the translations between AutoCad and Vectorworks can be tiresome, I have developed a pretty good workflow with the Technical Direction department, which uses Autocad. Try importing the CAD drawings into VW using different settings. Sometimes I find that I need to play with different import options just to make everything work right.

Also, I find that just because a designer uses Vectorworks, they don't always use the Spotlight features 'properly.' I often have to go thru and clean up the plot so that I can transfer data smoothly between Lightwright and Vectorworks.

When you update your venue drawings you can do them in either AutoCad or Vectorworks, as long as you pay attention to how each file type exports to the other.

In the end, you'll probably find a need for both Autocad and Vectorworks. They both will draft a light plot, but they go about it in different ways.

Contact me if you have any other questions. (jgoss@fgo.org)

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We recently worked on a big show in Dallas.

All the TD's had AutoCAD, all the LD's had VW.

It created problems.

It was decided that next year we'd hire TD's that used VW.

I believe that kind of thinking shows the wide spread of VW in the entertainment industry.

I used to see ACAD plots from LD's but I haven't seen one in a long time.

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