AutoCAD Customer Story | Autodesk: For Australian lighting designer Luke Bonner, AutoCAD was his secret to creating one of Kuwait’s most anticipated stage play productions that occurs during the Islamic Eid holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Using AutoCAD, Bonner was able to seamlessly collaborate with a new, multinational team of an architect, set designers, lighting technicians, and stage managers.
5 comments:
I was REALLY curious to see what this article had to offer. I do not relate AutoCAD and lighting, specifically because of the prominence of Vectorworks in the theatrical lighting community. Having used it for electrics work, I can't really begin to think about trying to get AutoCAD to do the same things Vectorworks can do. The paperwork generation alone using the Spotlight plugin for VW makes it unbelievably easy to organize lighting documents, while AutoCAD would need to rely on some intense LISP commands to accomplish the same goals. Now, that is not to say that you cannot use AutoCAD for lighting work; clearly this designer used it and found success in it. I can see using dynamic blocks and visibility states to create drawings similar to a Vectorworks generated plot. But again, Vectorworks still takes the cake due to its well designed Spotlight plugin as well as integration with other apps (such as LightWright). If I was in a pinch and just needed to plot something that was already based in AutoCAD, I would consider using it since I am far faster with the software. However, for anything beyond a simple conventional plot with a few dozen fixtures I wouldn't even think about using AutoCAD.
What I personally got from this story was that AutoCAD allows the entire design team to work in tandem to create almost a virtual stage with all of the necessary elements which can be super helpful so you can see how all the designs blend together before you even create them. The exception to this might be the costumes as I belive that AutoCAD is not suitable for costume design. Another thought I have is that everyone on the design team could speak a different language and they could all see and understand each others work through what they see on AutoCAD. Although clearly there would be some things that would be better communicated through language, this benefit of AutoCAD should be noted. AutoCAD is defiantly a helpful program for theatrical designers.
This was such an interesting article to read, not only because it talked about using AutoCad for lighting but also because of how it documents the work of Luke Bonner. It gives the readers an insight into his headspace and how that allowed him to use AutoCad for lighting, something which I had not yet heard of, because of how widely VectorWorks is used in the Lighting Industry.
The only use I have known of AutoCad is for set draftings or elevations. Likewise, I have only heard of how prominent VectorWorks is in the lighting world, ranging from basic designing to final light plots.
This article really manages to emphasize how nothing is set in stone when it comes to using softwares that have been historically used for a particular project. Luke Bonner using AutoCad for lighting such a big event is commendable, given how well the event turned out to be.
As someone who was first introduced to drafting through Vectorworks, and subsequently made it work to draft set designs, this article immediately caught my eye. I find it perplexing that lighting and scenic departments seem to normally use Vectorworks and AutoCAD exclusively, respectively and don’t leave much room for collaboration. I found this designer singing the praise of using the same software and being able to have that collaboration refreshing. I don’t know anything about LISPs, but I am interested in learning more about how that works and what it does for lighting. Being familiar with Vectorworks, I do know that it also a has a custom count value, so I’m not sure if that’s a good enough to use AutoCAD. I do hope however, that this trend of picking a software that can work across departments continues. I also think something like this could work really well for a smaller theater where there’s one person who’s a designated “Technical Director/Production Manager” who needs to have their hands in every technical pie, whether it’s scenic, lights, or sound.
This article was especially eye-grabbing to me because it seemed that AutoCAD was allowing for a more collaborative and cohesive process for the lighting and stage design. Especially in a digital age even more enforced by the pandemic, I believe this use of AutoCAD can be a great tool for getting more people to not only collaborate but understand each other's designs in a way where everyone is on the same page. It was very interesting to see how people were able to use AutoCAD in a way where they could relate it to both scenic and lighting. I still do not completely understand how a rendering and drafting software is able to facilitate lighting design, but I am intrigued to see how this will continue to advance. If this could also incorporate costume design to truly see how the lighting would affect the set and how costumes would be seen with these elements, it would be quite revolutionary for the theatrical design world.
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