Vectorworks for Entertainment Design

Using Vectorworks to Design and Document Scenery, Lighting, Rigging and Audio Visual Systems

Kevin Lee Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000095418
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Stagecraft & Scenography

Vectorworks for Entertainment Design covers the complete design process for using Vectorworks in entertainment industry from developing ideas, visualizing ideas, and evolving them for execution. This second edition has been extensively revised and updated, covering the most current details of the Vectorworks software for scenery, lighting, sound, and rigging; real and virtually.

With a focused look at the production process from ideation to development to documentation required for proper execution, the book encourages readers to better create their own processes and workflows through exercises that build on one another. This new edition introduces Braceworks, SubDivision modeling, and scripting using the Marionette tool, and covers new tools such as Video Camera, Deform Tool, Camera Match, Schematic Views, and Object Styles. Fully illustrated with step-by-step instructions, this volume contains inspirational and aspirational work from Broadway, Concerts, Regional Theatre, Dance, and Experiential Entertainment.

Exploring both the technical how-to and the art of design, this book provides Theatre Designers and Technicians with the tools to learn about the application and use it professionally.

Vectorworks for Entertainment Design also includes access to downloadable resources such as exercise files and images to accompany projects discussed within the book.

1. Drafting Principles and Standards

Before we begin to draw, let’s take a look at what we are drawing, and why.

This book will teach you how to create, draft, and document project designs. CAD is the way professionals work. Vectorworks is the CAD tool generally chosen in the entertainment industries. There are occasions when the lessons learned here will need to be transported to a hand-drawn world.

Although there is really only a minimal place for hand-drawn or drafted work in the modern professional world, those skills remain necessary. There are times when a scenic designer might be in a shop and explaining a detail to a carpenter. That would likely be done with a pencil on scrap paper, or scrap wood, and possibly using a nail, or a screw rather than a pencil. That takes skill.

A Lighting Designer might find themselves in a field with a bunch of sky-trackers. The light plot then might be scraped into the ground with the heel of the designer’s shoe. That is drafting and design on the fly.

Meetings often rely on quick scribbles on pads or iPads. Everyone draws. It is expected that the designers can communicate clearly and concisely with a pencil or pen.

The brain to hand connection at every stage of the design process, especially the beginning of the design process, is critical. Most work starts as a doodle.

We can expect that devices like the Apple Pencil will make CAD more like hand drawing over time.

This plate of drawings provides basic information for a simple scenic element for a ballet.

Design is storytelling.

A hand-drawn object may be converted to a computer-drawn document to be sent to a computer-controlled (CnC) router or a 3D printer, these technologies can do nothing with hand drafting. The technology of construction and rigging is state-of-the-art and technology driven. Make no mistake, 3D printers can be used to create scenic models today, and they will be used to the actual scenery in the near future.

Drafting is Design, and Design requires clear Drafting. We will start at the beginning. You do not need to know how to hand draft at this point, but you can apply the principles here to learn to hand draft. Develop your hand skills as you develop your computer skills.

In show business, the first rule is that there are no rules.

Architects have rules. Engineers have lots of rules. Theatrical drawing, drafting, and documentation is often like an untamed frontier defined by the designer or draftsperson’s own style, technique, and taste. Our only rule is we must get the show built and installed. The producer has sold tickets for a certain day and time, and before that, the company needs to rehearse. You must have clearly communicated the needs and the look well before. Accurate drawings aid collaboration.

OK, so there’s a rule.

This plate of drawings details a simple scenic element for a ballet.

This is the art of telling the story of the design.

There are two basic types of drawing that we’re discussing: engineering drawing and artistic drawing, and both can simply be called drawing when the context is clear. Engineering drawing, and artistic drawing both create pictures, both help tell a story. Typically, any story requires both kinds of drawing. The purpose of artistic drawing is to express emotion, or render a moment, an object, or an instance in a subjective manner. Engineering drawings convey objective information.

Accuracy and precision are everything. Tell the stagehand to put a light or a speaker in the wrong place and you’ve cost the producer money. You’ll also have cost the production time. There is never enough of either commodity.

So, there’s a second rule; you must be accurate in your drawing.

Here’s a third rule; for the most part when creating a set of drawings, when telling the story of the design, the drawings would be complete enough that if the designer were to be hit by a bus when the documentation is completed, others should be able to execute the design without the designer. This is less true of lighting and sound than scenery, but the rule holds.

Line Weight

When theatrical drawing (like architectural or engineering drawing) was done by hand, the draftsperson sought to master three different line weights:

• A Thin Line Weight for leaders, invisible objects, and dimensions.
• A Thick Line Weight mostly reserved to delineate the cutaway of a section view.
• A Medium Line Weight for pretty much everything else. Although a lot of hand drafting was very pictorial, the basic outline of shapes, including individual lighting instruments drawn from a template, all maintained this line quality.

Detail of a Side Elevation of a Hanging Position by Lighting Designer Steven Louis Shelley.

These were plenty of line weights to be consistently drawn by hand. Even though we have many more options available using Vectorworks, it is generally still true. As you grow as an artist, you may see this rule change. You may opt to have more line weights.

On a Light Plot, or a Sound Plot, the darkest lines are reserved for the lighting instruments and audio gear. That is definitely not to say that these are places to use your heavy/thick line. However, the venue architecture, scenery, masking, and audience must not draw the crew’s attention away from clearly seeing the proper placement of the gear.

When hand drafted, lots of artistic flair could be added to the more technical drawings, so long as the drawings remained highly accurate. It was believed the same wasn’t true with CAD drawings. With Vectorworks, that’s not true. Gradients, line weights, drop shadows, hatches, transparency, and the like can all be added to technical drawings to add flair and emphasis.

Preliminary sketch for a television project.

Consider the audience when designing a drawing. An electrician likely doesn’t need any special effects to understand where to place a unit. A performer, director, or producer might not be skilled at reading plans, so adding wood grain to the floor and drop shadows on the furniture might help them better understand the final product.

Line Types

The same is also true of Line Types:

• A solid line to indicate the outlines of objects, in a medium line weight, and possibly a light line weight to indicate some lesser details.
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• A short dashed line in a light line weight to indicate details below or inside an object.
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• A medium dashed line for annotations or exploded views.
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• A long dashed line in a light line weight to indicate objects overhead.
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• A dashed line in a light line weight with a long dash, a short, and then another long (repeating) to indicate the centerline of an object or a stage.
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• A dashed line in a heavy line weight with a long dash, two short dashes, and then another long (repeating) to indicate the cut line, and the same weight in a solid line to indicate outline of a section view.
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So,

What’s a section view? That is sometimes, and for many, a challenging concept. Fortunately, Vectorworks makes a Section View easy to draw and easy to understand, just not first thing. We’ll get to that soon enough.

Line weights and line types clarify objects. That’s the point right now. Lines usually drawn as objects is a basic concept in visual communication. Once we start to draw this, it will become more evident and is something to bring along every step of the way.

This book addresses, or will speak to, many different types of drawings. Let’s begin with some definitions and a look at the basic types of views required to illustrate and execute a design.

The first doodle is likely a hand-drawn perspective view and/or plan (aerial, or a bird’s eye) view by a designer. We’ll spend a considerable amount of time on perspective and rendering, but for the moment let’s just define perspective as the drawing of objects in two-dimensions, giving the correct impressions of height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a specific spot. Perspective creates the illusion of depth where there is none.

A good draftsperson can visually reverse engineer a properly drawn (or even badly drawn) perspective view to create all other views.

Perspective views give life to a design; they can express the emotion of the design, but they are not detailed enough to execute a design. Perspective views can be drawn from a point of having scale, but they are, by their nature, not to scale.

Human Figures should always be included in perspective views, elevations, and sections to help indicate scale, even when dimensions (indications of size) are present, whenever possible.

Two similar objects, the o...