List Price: Spotlight: $2,695; Spotlight & Renderworks: $3,245
From its humble beginnings as MiniCAD in 1985, Vectorworks has gone through many changes over the past 31 years. And while the company historically gets an update once a year, some years the improvements are more pronounced than others. For 2016, Vectorworks definitely got a major update to its suite of tools.
First, for those that don't know, Vectorworks is a cross platform Computer Aided Drafting or CAD program that allows you to design in both the 2D and 3D environments. It is generally accepted as the standard design program for the entertainment industry and is used to design sets, lighting, audio, and camera placements for film, television shows, concerts, and permanent installs.
In addition to the entertainment industry, Vectorworks is a worldwide leader in Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems in the architectural design world, and it holds a prominent market share in the world of landscape architecture, as well.
In its most basic form called Fundamentals, it has the basic Vectorworks CAD 2D and 3D functionality, 2D documentation, many different import and export options to other design packages, and integration with Renderworks, Vectorworks' add on photorealistic rendering package. While Fundamentals has everything that you need to do most any kind of design, where Vectorworks really shines is when you get into the industry-specific add-on modules.
The Modules
In brief, there are four add-on modules that can be affixed to the base Fundamentals package. They are Landmark, Architect, Spotlight, and Renderworks, with Designer being all of the modules rolled up into one.
Landmark adds specific tools for those doing landscape design, including a library of plants, trees and shrubs, as well as water features.
Architect provides an array of tools for architects and those doing building design, including Building Information Modeling tools, and sustainable design tools that let users gauge the energy efficiency of a building.
Spotlight adds design tools for those working in the entertainment industry. It offers a wide array of design symbols that represent equipment used in the entertainment industry, such as lights, truss, motors, speakers, drape, and stage decks. Renderworks, which is Vectorworks photorealistic render software powered by Maxon’s Cinema 4D render engine, allows designers to take their ideas, draw them in 3D, and render out final designs to communicate them in the form of a photorealistic picture.
Lastly, there is Designer, which is all of the modules packaged together. Overall, Designer is the best value because it is offered at a discount compared to purchasing the modules separately at the single module prices. As noted previously, Vectorworks gets an update every year—so there are new features are in 2016 affect what the modules can do, and how a church can benefit from them.
There are four add-on modules that can be affixed to the vectorworks 2016 base Fundamentals package—Landmark, Architect, Spotlight, and Renderworks, with Designer being all of the modules rolled up into one.
2016 Updates
One of the first major additions to Vectorworks is Point Cloud Support. A Point Cloud is generated when a user laser scans a room. From this Point Cloud data, the user can generate an accurate 3D model of his or her room.
A number of churches today were built before architectural drawings were done on a computer, leaving sparse or non-existent architectural drawings of the building. Some buildings have been remodeled—and so the room doesn’t match the original drawings at all. Having a room laser scanned can give staff an accurate model of the room that can be used to accurately design retrofit systems, special productions, or even week-to-week activities.
Another major upgrade to 2016 is the addition of the Marionette scripting tool. Marionette allows users to visually chain together pre-built blocks of code to quickly build dynamic objects. For instance, you have an idea to build a set that uses columns, but you want to experiment with different diameters and heights. In less than a minute you can chain together a script that would allow the creation of 3D columns. You define the diameter and the height and execute the script, and the column is instantly built into your drawing. Of course, this is just a basic example; the same can be done for all sorts of complex shapes that you might want to use over and over again without having to know detailed coding.
Along the same lines as Marionette are the new Subdivision Surface Modeling tools. For this, Vectorworks took a page directly out of the Pixar Animation Studios playbook by basing the tools on Pixar’s OpenSubdiv library, a library of tools that allow users to transform rigid lines into smooth shapes. With it, users can create smooth flowing sculpted objects that were difficult to achieve before. In Spotlight, there are several new and improved tools, as well, the most notable being the Hoist Tool. With the Hoist Tool you can place chain motors in your drawings and keep track of things like Hoist Type, Function, Trim Height, Point Load, and its use.
Vectorworks has also updated the Create Stage command, allowing more flexibility in creating stages and individual stage decks, including custom decks.
In addition, the company has updated the Curved Truss Tool, allowing for better control of curved truss, and has improved the flexibility in the Spotlight workflow, allowing you to work to your liking instead of being forced into the software’s way of doing things. Yet another addition includes updating the paperwork and worksheet functions in Spotlight, enabling users to print out different types of reports to speed up the installation of lighting fixtures, as well as the programming and system documentation.
Vectorworks kept all of the previous functionality, of course, such as the ability to import a PDF or image file and be able to add it to a drawing—great for those architectural drawings that are only on paper. Have them scanned to a PDF or TIFF and then import them, resize them and use them as a base layer to design on. It still supports the import and export of DWG/DXF AutoCAD files to seamlessly transfer data back and forth with AutoCAD, and each year the Spotlight symbol library is updated with all of the new lighting symbols for all of the major lighting manufacturers, as well as some audio manufacturers such as Yamaha and d&b audiotechnik.
Video Impressions
The video tools in Vectorworks are excellent. You can easily add a projection screen, LED wall, or LCD display to your drawings. The projector tool can even help a user pick their lensing for the distances and size they are are projecting and help determine placement of projectors for edge blending.
There are many add-ons to Vectorworks made by third parties such as ESP Vision (which has just been acquired by Vectorworks), a lighting visualization program that directly integrates with Spotlight and allows you to program on your lighting console virtually, without actually having to hang the lighting fixtures. There is ConnectCAD that allows you to do single line connection diagrams for audio, video, IT, lighting, and power. In addition, Lightwrite is a full-featured theater paperwork add-on program that is available. And Video Screen 4 Plus gives users more video tool functionality than Vectorworks native tools, as well as Audio Tool Set and Softgoods 2—and the list goes on and on.
Church Specificity
So how would you use Vectorworks in your church? It’s all about the ability to plan in scale, and do so in a manner that saves time, money, and people resources.
I had used Vectorworks, for several years before I figured out what CAD software was really good at. It was during the design of a Christmas program at my church, and I had an epiphany. The director had big ideas of what he wanted on our platform and what we were going to do for the program. The problem was, his ideas were much grander than our platform would allow; we were out of room. No matter how much I argued that what he wanted wouldn’t fit on our platform, neither he nor the worship leader believed me. So the audio guy and myself painstakingly measured out the room and I drew it up. I then modeled the set pieces from the measurements that the director threw out, and placed them onto the floor plan of our platform and, ultimately, our sanctuary. As I suspected, we had set pieces all the way out into the lobby.
Once the worship leader and the drama director saw the drawings to scale, they realized that they had to simplify their set designs to fit our space. At the same time, it allowed me to incorporate my lighting design with the set design and the audio guy to place the band in the drawing. Of course, it didn’t all fit the first time, but allowed us to move the pieces around in the computer until we made it all fit the best it could, all virtually. Once we had the designs completed, we could print out copies and distribute it to the set builders, drama director, worship leader, facilities people, the bandleader, and anyone else who needed to know the plan.
Reviewer's Take
Vectorworks is a professional-level CAD program and, as such, there is a learning curve in figuring out the software; but Vectorworks is also a designer’s software package and has a visual style and layout to it that makes it easier to learn than other CAD packages that are more engineering-oriented.
The software is also very well documented, with excellent manuals, video tutorials, a continuously updated product knowledge base, and very active user forums.
Overall, Vectorworks is an excellent design tool, but with a price tag of $2,695 for Spotlight and $3,245 for Spotlight and Renderworks, it’s probably not for everyone. The company does allow a free trial before you buy; you can download the demo from its website and spend time evaluating the software, which I would highly recommend.
If yours is a church that is constantly changing its scenic and lighting designs, or you do several special productions each year, or you need a system that will allow you to draw up and test designs for your portable campuses, Vectorworks might be for you.
