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LIGHT & SOUND INTERNATIONAL • MARCH 2018
ENTERTAINMENT • PRESENTATION • INSTALLATION
IN THIS ISSUE:
Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Staging Shakespeare in Tel Aviv
Tech Focus: MAC Encore Performance
The Martin CLD profi le reviewed
Preview: Prolight+Sound
Expected highlights
SHOW REVIEW: ISE, AMSTERDAM • TF: CHAUVET’S OVATION B-1965FC • PROFILE: BRYTE DESIGN
AUDIO UPGRADE: VICTORIA THEATRE, HALIFAX • PROFILE: READ AUDIO • FUTURE TECH: DRONES
VENUE: WINDSOR PARK, BELFAST • IN PROFILE: GLP’S SIMON BARRETT - AND MUCH MORE . . .
Refreshing an Icon
Refi tting the Joan Sutherland Theatre
www.lsionline.com
DIGITAL
EDITION
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Rob has been working in and
writing about lighting for more than
25 years, on shows around the
world. He wonders if this makes
him a classic... or just old!
classic gear
i
TECH
MARCH 2018
•
WWW.LSIONLINE.COM72
It’s always slightly
disappointing to realise
that even though our
‘products’ - the shows we create capture the attention of many, we
remain a relatively small industry in
global terms. That’s why the key tools
we use are often hand-me-downs
from other industries, whether that
be LED sources, or Ethernet, or the
programmes we use to design shows - CAD software.
Take AutoCAD, probably the biggest player in this field. You
can of course use it to design shows - many do - but
I don’t think you’ll find any mention of stage lighting within the
software itself. Conversely, there are specialist tools in our field
- in lighting, the web-based Drafty or the powerful WYSIWYG are
both great, but they are not wider CAD solutions.
However, can paying attention to a niche while being a broader
solution help you grow your company? One tool suggests it can.
In 1985, Richard Diehl, had been working on high-end
computers in the aerospace industry and not paying any
attention to the lowly PC market - until Apple launched the
Macintosh. Diehl saw that this was something remarkable and
new - the future. He took out a loan, bought a Mac development
system and started working on what would become MiniCad. At
first conceived as a ‘resume project’ to show what both he and
the Mac were capable of, Diehl then started selling it, having
realised there was demand for computer-aided design solutions,
particularly such that felt like Mac applications - mouse-driven
through a graphical user interface - rather
than the command syntax AutoCAD relied
on. Besides, AutoCAD wasn’t available for
the Mac.
MiniCad wasn’t quite the only Mac CAD
package, but it was powerful - with core
support for 3D modeling, with the ability to
track objects in the drawing, and with a built-
in programming language, so you
could extend its functionality if you
had the inclination. Ultimately, Diehl
did also pay attention to PCs: with
MiniCAD 6 in 1996 (the software’s
history is littered with changes in
capitalisation!) the software became
available for Window as well, allowing
users to share files across platforms.
Diehl also seems to have paid
attention to who his users were: by the mid-90s, MiniCAD was
touting support for particular industries, one of which was
theatre lighting. Diehl had hired theatre professional Frank Bault
to create theatre-specific macros and symbols. As MiniCAD
evolved into VectorWorks, Kevin Moore and Kevin Linzey
expanded this functionality into an optional entertainment
lighting add-on called Spotlight. Which surely means that we in
entertainment were instrumental in Diehl Graphsoft first floating
successfully on the stock exchange, then being bought by the
European software company Nemetschek Group for $30m in
2000. Who says we aren’t good customers?
Vectorworks, as the name has settled to, has continued to evolve
since, Spotlight gaining the ability to interchange information
with industry stalwart Lightwright, with Vision pre-vis software the
company now owns, and in Vectorworks 2018 with Braceworks,
a new tools for performing load analysis on truss structures.
Vectorworks is not particularly cheap - and many
entertainment users don’t come anywhere close to tapping
into its full potential. But as well as its power, it has two key
advantages: it’s widely used, so there’s
a high chance others you’re working with
are also using it, and if they’re not, it does
a good job of importing and exporting most
of the other file formats you’re likely to have
to deal with.
I
Vectorworks now: P www.vectorworks.net
Vectorworks then: P //plasa.me/diehl
The gx range’s unrivalled power density pushes
generative content to new heights. Visit disguise at
Prolight & Sound - stand 4.0 C21 to see the powerful gx
range, and r15 software update in action.
disguise.one/en/products/gx
MiniCad/Vectorworks | by Rob Halliday . . .
B Diehl Graphsoft’s website from the 1990s
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