In addition to his work designing theatrical and stage lightning projects, he presents demos and courses on Vectorworks Spotlight, the Design Series version of Vectorworks for lighting designers.
In his book Light Plot Deconstructed (Columbia MD, Nemetschek North America, 2009), Hillmar is set to show how to use Vectorworks and Vectorworks Spotlight tools to create lighting design projects. To make himself closer to users that are new to the software (and often new to computers) the author will start each section subject comparing manual drafting to the computer based production of drawings.
The book can be divided into two parts. In the first one, Hillmar describes the program's settings, starting with preferences settings, workspaces, how to create a new document, adjusting color, layers and classes. The description of these adjustments will be of most interest tor beginners, those already familiar with the commands and tools explained in this part might want to skip and start reading from the second part.
In the second part, the author takes a given building (can be a Vectorworks file or a drawing imported from . DWG) to create a lighting project with Spotlight tools, bring together the final presentation and printing documents. In this part, the highlight is the nice sequence proposed by the author to assemble the design, starting with the positioning of truss structures, insertion of static lights, moving lights, lightning accessories and other objects, creation of labels and reports, in the same order as they would come up in the real world. This makes it very easy to understand the production of a lighting project, even for those with little or no experience of the subject.
In summary, the book delivers what it promises, showing how to create a lighting design project from an architectural design in Vectorworks. It is important to note that the book does not address in deep the use of 3D nor how to create presentation images of the stage and its lighting. As the author states, this would better fit a book on its own.
Light Plot Deconstructed
Gregg Hillmar
Columbia, MD, USA
Nemetschek North America, 2009
92 pages - wire bound
In his book Light Plot Deconstructed (Columbia MD, Nemetschek North America, 2009), Hillmar is set to show how to use Vectorworks and Vectorworks Spotlight tools to create lighting design projects. To make himself closer to users that are new to the software (and often new to computers) the author will start each section subject comparing manual drafting to the computer based production of drawings.
The book can be divided into two parts. In the first one, Hillmar describes the program's settings, starting with preferences settings, workspaces, how to create a new document, adjusting color, layers and classes. The description of these adjustments will be of most interest tor beginners, those already familiar with the commands and tools explained in this part might want to skip and start reading from the second part.
In the second part, the author takes a given building (can be a Vectorworks file or a drawing imported from . DWG) to create a lighting project with Spotlight tools, bring together the final presentation and printing documents. In this part, the highlight is the nice sequence proposed by the author to assemble the design, starting with the positioning of truss structures, insertion of static lights, moving lights, lightning accessories and other objects, creation of labels and reports, in the same order as they would come up in the real world. This makes it very easy to understand the production of a lighting project, even for those with little or no experience of the subject.
In summary, the book delivers what it promises, showing how to create a lighting design project from an architectural design in Vectorworks. It is important to note that the book does not address in deep the use of 3D nor how to create presentation images of the stage and its lighting. As the author states, this would better fit a book on its own.
Light Plot Deconstructed
Gregg Hillmar
Columbia, MD, USA
Nemetschek North America, 2009
92 pages - wire bound
For more information and to buy online: www.nemetschek.net/training/guides.php
