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| April 2014 Newsletter Read this online |
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| Design & Drafting Releases LD Assistant 2014 |
LD Assistant Ac14 offers “the easiest, most cost-effective way to design your lighting, sound, video and other production elements.”
LD Assistant is used by CAD professionals around the world.
• Lighting Design - Photometric Lights that include Halogen, Fluorescent, Mercury Vapor & others.
• Stage Lighting - Create lighting, sound and video plots, generate advanced paperwork.
• Scenic Design - Industry standard 3D modeling tools make set design quick and easy.
• Event Planning - Advanced seating tools allow quick place of tables and chairs.
• Event Visualization - Fully animated flythroughs, flyovers and walkthroughs in real-time.
• Pre Visualization - Connect to lighting consoles using SACN, Art-Net or Pathport.
• 3D Visualization - Play Video and 3D Audio as you Walk through your design.
• FX Rendering - Renderings look like photographs with Raytrace and Radiosity technology.
• Wire & Cable - Track Cable length, Name, ID, Price, To/From Location and more.
• 2D Drafting - Create a complete set of 2D working drawings to give your Architect.
• 3D Design - Easily turn a 2D room drawing in to a 3D model ready for texturing.
• Exhibit - Quickly add truss, light your design and make a walkthrough movie. |
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| Lighting&Sound America TECHNICAL FOCUS: PRODUCT DEPTH |
| As seen in the December issue of Lighting & Sound America |
LD Assistant Review
By: Stephen Ellison
Inside the popular design software |
LD Assistant 13 is the latest lighting
design and event planning software by Design and Drafting, and it’s a package
that raises the bar for lighting
designers who want to create drawings,
schedules, and rendered movies
of their designs. Combining lighting,
sound, video, set design, and event
planning into one program, the Windows-compatible software’s 2-D
drafting and 3-D modeling tools are
designed to save time and streamline
work flow, get the client to interact with the design process, and ultimately
win more jobs.
Menus and 2-D/3-D tools
Design and Drafting is a licensed
developer and OEM partner with
Autodesk, from which it leverages licensed Technology. Building on this,
LD Assistant 13 offers advanced
menus, including Lighting, |
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Visualization, and Production. If you
need a generic virtual space to test
out fixtures, the Lighting menu
includes Create Room, where you can
define a 3-D room with a stage inside
and general downlighting. In the
Lighting menu, Panel View is a button
for LD Task, which brings up a list of
nine tasks; each takes the user to
another window populated with the
choices associated with the task.
These windows are designed for
novices as they familiarize themselves
with the program. It is organized in the
order that you would design your plot;
as you go from task to task, a plot and
documentation are created. The Lighting menu is home to the
tools that work with lighting fixtures:
Create, Data, View, Focus, Display,
Modify, Schedules, and Utilities.
Create offers content fly-out windows
with library folders of the blocks that
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you can add to your drawing.
The content
section contains blocks for light
fixtures, truss, stage elements, chairs,
and more. Create includes three tools
to help automate the design process.
The first is the Create Room tool, while
the second allows truss and lights to
be quickly added to a space. The
third, Automatic Lighting, uses a popup
window to add fixtures to light a
target object using the standard
McCandless 45° method or along a
polyline you create.
A lighting fixture or other object in a
plot contains data that may need to be
visible on the plot or only in a schedule.
A button in the Data section
accesses a pop-up indow based on
the object you select. The attributes
available to fill in are based on the
type of object. The choice of visible attributes is in the Display section.
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| Cick here to download and read the complete review |
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| Featured Rendering - by FSU School of Theatre and Dance students |
| Chris Burgos and Greg Bierce |
| For the play "Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends, (An Evening With the Illuminati)". |
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| by Chris Burgos |
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| by Greg Beirce |
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| CAD Articles |
How to Control the Viewcube Display by Jeff Arbogast, IMAGINiT Technologies Support Blog
The Viewcube can be a nice visual option. However, sometimes we would like to get rid of the Viewcube. This is controlled by the Visual Styles. Here is how we can control this display.Click here to keep reading |
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FLATSHOT in Action By AutoCAD Tips
Employ FLATSHOT command while reorienting view of 3D model, click picture with camera that acts as flattened 2D representation of 3D model, reduce file size by applying OVERKILL, PURGE or JOIN commands in AutoCAD. Click here to keep reading |
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Automatic AutoCAD dimension spacing using double click action by Edwin Prakoso
This double click feature allows the user to space an individual dimension (accordingly to the MMI 3/8” spacing standards) by double clicking a neighboring dimension. The following steps will guide you through a series of instructions to create this feature.
By default, DIMSPACE command allows you to input the distance manually or choose auto. Auto distance will give you distance 2x of text height. Now we will see how you can change it to 3/8”. The are various ways to place this custom command, like in toolbar, ribbon panel, or context menu (right click). In this tip, we will use it in double click action. Click here to view |
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Setting the interface back to the classic view by Cherisse Biddulph, IMAGINiT Technologies Support Blog
If you want to set your plain or vanilla AutoCAD current version (or lower) back to the classic look with pull-down menus and toolbars all you need to do is switch to "AutoCAD Classic" from the Workspace switch icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
Click on the Workspace icon that looks like a gear in the lower right corner of the software. Click here to keep reading |
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Quick Tip: View Dashed Lines in a Viewport by Michael Beall, AUGI Library
In the hands-on lab—"Click My Ride: Customizing Autodesk® AutoCAD® for How You Work"—that I presented at Autodesk University 2013, we took a look at a few fundamental approaches to customizing, and adjusting the viewport display of non-continuous linetypes such as Dashed, Center, Hidden, etc. is just squirrely enough to warrant some automation.
As we know, non-continuous linetypes in model space are governed by the LTSCALE variable. A common rule of thumb is to set the LTSCALE factor to the inverse of the plot scale; i.e., if you’re plotting 1/4" = 1’0”, set it to 48. . Click here to keep reading |
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Command Line is Now by Issac Harper, What's the Word on AutoCAD
In AutoCAD 2014 the command entry was enhanced to support mid‐string search. For example, if you type SETTING on the command line, the suggestion list displays commands containing the word SETTING anywhere it may fall in the word, not just at the beginning. I realized how useful this was when I am trying to remember what the exact name of a system-variable or command name was or is currently, (like ClassicArray or is it ArrayClassic…) No bother, it displays either way now! Click here to keep reading |
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Mobile Champion - Lenovo ThinkPad W530 mobile workstation delivers incredible price and performance. by David Cohn
Over the past few years, we've reviewed numerous Lenovo ThinkStation workstations. We've consistently been impressed with the company's ability to deliver performance at an affordable price. But it's been more than four years since we last looked at one of the company's mobile workstations. We were, therefore, excited when the Lenovo ThinkPad W530 arrived. Click here to keep reading |
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Thank You!
Design & Drafting appreciates your interest in our products. Please forward this newsletter to your friends and associates,
however, NO part of this newsletter may be used without permission. © Copyright 2013 by Chicago Stage Equipment Company Inc. D.B.A. Design & Drafting. Autodesk, AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, DWF, DWG, DXF, ObjectARX are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.© 2012 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rufus W Warren III Editor |
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