This video covers drawing using dimensions and snaps to produce your CAD drawing with accuracy. Spotlight Tutorial 2 – Drawing and Accuracy This tutorial covers the Vectorworks interface, setting out the workspace and the basics of starting a document including page set up and scale. N ote: If you reading this via email or in your RSS feed reader it’s likely that you can’t see the embedded videos – just pop over to the site and they are all here waiting for ya… Spotlight Tutorial 1 – Interface and Document Setup I have left the original content above for fun and to remind me that we all start somewhere! UPDATE to disclaimer!! I’ve since taught hundreds of people to use Vectorworks Spotlight over many years. I probably do not have the answer to any VW questions you might have and if you are looking for a document based tutorial from someone who is experienced with Vectorworks Spotlight, I highly recommend the series by Kent Goetz at Cornell including Drafting The Light Plot. Here is the series of six, using VW 2010, for the readers of On Stage Lighting to enjoy(?!) if CAD floats yer boat, please excuse the streaming head cold I had when recording them.ĭisclaimer: As previously mentioned, I do not have a history of using Vectorworks and these tutorials are created by me, a new user with years of lighting design experience but about 12 hours flying time on Vectorworks. So, I created a set of videos based on the very basics of Vectorworks in 2D that a beginner needs to get through before they can move on. Learning complex CAD software can be confusing, and it’s often useful to be able to revisit things you tried out in training sessions sometime in the future. And having a history in other software, I found many aspects of VW hard to learn – mostly because things didn’t “do what I expected”, relative to other packages. You might know, being able to get stuff to happen by fiddling with menus is a world away from being able to teach it to others.

My task was to learn Vectorworks in order to be able to teach it to Year 1 students and also help more advanced students with their drawings. I had used many different CAD and design packages, 3D CGI software and specialised tools such as Cast Software’s WYSIWYG. OK, so when I first took my very first year of Theatre Production students through CAD and Vectorworks so that they can complete their second lighting project – a small lighting design, communicated using VW.

A series of video tutorials on using Vectorworks Spotlight to draw a simple theatre plan with lighting equipment and fixtures data.

Vectorworks spotlight trial