Vectorworks Symbols

[Spader]

Hello:

I've been looking everywhere for these symbols, and I cannot find them. At all. Can anyone help me find a source for these symbols, or will I have to somehow make them myself? I've seen them all over the place, in just about every professional plot that I've found.

 

[jstandfast]

Not sure they are THE symbols but you might try fieldtemplate.com. Steve has a bunch........

 

[Grog12]

Hello:

I've been looking everywhere for these symbols, and I cannot find them. At all. Can anyone help me find a source for these symbols, or will I have to somehow make them myself? I've seen them all over the place, in just about every professional plot that I've found.

View attachment 5510View attachment 5511

The ERS fixture looks like VW's stock Shakespeare or SL symbol. I'd trying looking in resources for it there.

 

[Spader]

It isn't those...I doubt that they are part of VW's stock symbols. VW's symbols are incredibly simple compared to these.

I've also looked through SoftSymbols many times, because they are the major return that I get when I try to search for VW symbols on the internet.

 

[SteveB]

I saw symbols like these on the plot for Spiderman, drawn I believe by Vivien Leone.

They are not the SoftSymbols I use and that I just purchased for VW2009. Possibly they might be an older SoftSymbol set as Steve updated the library for 2009 and up.

Let me know if you find out as I actually like these better,

 

[icewolf08]

Hello:

I've been looking everywhere for these symbols, and I cannot find them. At all. Can anyone help me find a source for these symbols, or will I have to somehow make them myself? I've seen them all over the place, in just about every professional plot that I've found.

View attachment 5510View attachment 5511

Actually, the graphics in the image are the VW stock symbols, they are the just slightly modified to use the hand drafted standard hatches. I just double checked the plot that I am working off of for our current show, and the symbols are the same as the ones you pictured. Of course the label legends are done up really nicely in your image. If you don't have those symbols in your VW libraries, then you are probably missing some files.

 

[Spader]

I saw symbols like these on the plot for Spiderman, drawn I believe by Vivien Leone.

It's funny that you say that; these screengrabs are from the Spiderman plot.

@Alex: I can't find them in my default libraries. Are they from the ETC file? Would this be a problem associated with moving straight from VW2010 to VW2011?

 

[rochem]

Actually, the graphics in the image are the VW stock symbols, they are the just slightly modified to use the hand drafted standard hatches. I just double checked the plot that I am working off of for our current show, and the symbols are the same as the ones you pictured. Of course the label legends are done up really nicely in your image. If you don't have those symbols in your VW libraries, then you are probably missing some files.

Alex, what version of VW are you using? I've only used Vectorworks for a few years, but I'm very sure that those aren't the default ETC or USITT symbols, at least in versions 2009 and later. Do you perhaps have a file that's been updated by someone else over the years? I personally hate most of the VW default symbols - they're not not very nice to look at, and the S4 PARs are significantly smaller than their real-world counterparts.

To the OP, these are some nice symbols, and you're right, they tend to pop up on big designer's plots a lot. At least on Broadway, most if not all of the drafting isn't done by the designers, but by their associates. By nature of their work, the end up sharing a lot of files and symbols, so it's not surprising that they start to resemble one another. With some designers (Yael Lubetzky comes to mind), you can pretty much identify her plots right away based on the symbols she uses, but those symbols from Spiderman seem to be the standard flavor from what I've seen as well. If Soft Symbols interests you at all, go for that - it's a well done product, although I'm not so much a fan of the graphical symbols. Other than that, I'd say to start making your own. It's not as hard as it looks, and it'll let you customize your symbols exactly how you like them. I've built up a very large inventory of symbols, some that I've made myself and some that others have given me, but I still have yet to find a great VL3500 Wash symbol that I like.

I'm not sure if this may have legal ramifications, so if it's questionably legal, I hope a mod will smite me and delete this paragraph. But you might even be able to import a PDF of a light plot into VW, scale it appropriately, and literally trace over the symbols they used to make your own. I wouldn't do this for everything, but for conventionals which are fairly standardized, it might not be a huge problem. Again, I don't know if these symbols would fall under intellectual property, so use your own judgement, and if someone contradicts me here, then forget it.

 

[SteveB]

These are the S4 36 deg. and S4 Par Wide stock symbols as found in the Resource Browser library that came standard with VW2009.

These are not the symbols the OP is showing.

 

[anshu]

To the best of my knowledge those are the symbols drawn a few years ago by the Billington office, and how now become the standard for most higher end New York work.
You can get them, but you have to be in the know with someone

 

[np18358]

I'm looking for the fixtures in question in this thread. The soft symbols ones won't work for my situation, nor will the VW standard symbols. Does anyone know where I might find them? Thanks.

 

[SteveB]

I'm looking for the fixtures in question in this thread. The soft symbols ones won't work for my situation, nor will the VW standard symbols. Does anyone know where I might find them? Thanks.

I believe anshu answered this in his 9/2011 post.