Lighting Designer ~ Electrician ~ Programmer
Alexander Marshall

Vectorworks Drafting
Drafting has long been my favorite part of lighting design. Something about learning and applying all the niche little tools at my disposal, coming up with work flows that optimize my efficiency, and the real and useful application of math in art is just so satisfying to me. I've always been quick ot adopt new verisons of vectorworks as soon as they are stable, and I'm always looking for new ways to communicate my designs purely through software. Displayed as the main image for this page is my most recent drafting project, for the production of The Moors that I am designing. If you'd like to learn more, check out that page under My Work!
This is one plate from one of my paper projects that I'm particularluy fond of, as throughout the course of working on it I felt my workflow begin to crystallize, and I learned so much about how to incorporate personality and experimentation into my drafts without sacraficing clarity and informational capacity. This plot was a particularly dense one with a lot of unique hanging positions and different lighting devices, and I struggled to fit everything I needed to in the plates. In working on it, I discovered some of the shortcomings of the standard spotlight symbols and how I might customize them to fit my own drafting style, as well as better ways to approach my layer and class organization and line weights. I think I've made a lot of progress since creating this draft, and everything that I've learned from it is on full display in my drafts for The Moors!

Here's a quick little virtual tour of my current design project, The Moors, which I've drafted fully in 3d. Doing so allowed me to work with accurate beam cones and shutters to ensure some of the more complicated shots that dodge things like the chandelier will actually work in real life. Having this fully in 3d also allowed me to do things like export it into Unreal Engine for previsualization and Augment3D for tech.