There are two main programs in the lighting world that are used to create a lighting
plot (create a visual representation of where the lights go) and one main program used to assist in the paperwork of the show (what light is in what
circuit is in what
dimmer is in what
channel is in what group and so on).
For the lighting
plot, the main programs are
Vectorworks and AutoCAD. I personally have only used
vectorworks (though my school uses AutoCAD and I will be learning it later this year). I find
vectorworks easy to use, and does everything I want it to. If you want to do 3D plots it may be tricky, but nice 2D plots are fine with it.
Vectorworks has several flavors, standard, renderworks, spotlight and several others. Spotlight is the flavor that deals with lighting. Renderworks is useless unless you get advanced and want to do pre vis and render plots.
From what I hear,
vectorworks is the main application for the lighting industry (and by that I mean I have met many people [including a big designer who designs Radio City Music Halls Christmas Spectacular] and they use
Vectorworks). I believe that most senic designers use AutoCAD.
AutoCAD is the other big application. I can not speak in great detail about it, having never used it, but I have heard good things about it, though most people say they like
Vectorworks better for lighitng. I know as was previously posted that you need a plugin to do lighting plots.
For paperwork, the industry standard is Lightwrite. This is a spread sheet application that makes orginizing lighting fixtures easy. Once you set up your theater (easy to do) you can create lights and do all the paperwork. Basically, its a verson of excel, only it knows what data your giving it. So you can patch your show into dimmers, and tell the program how many watts whatever light is, and the program will tell you the load of the show. You can tell the program what
dimmer ranges are in what
dimmer pack and on what
phase of
power (if you have a 3
phase system) and it will do all that math for you as well.
The demo of Lightwrite is for 75 fixtures, and besides the 75 fixtures it is a perfectly working copy, so I would suggest downloading that and giving it a try.
Vectorworks is very nice and will export your visual
plot into a lightwrite file, I'm not sure if AutoCAD will do the same.
Note: and heres the big note:
How big is this space? How many fixtures? I have found that it may not be worth getting an expensive program if the theater has only 20 or 30 lights. Its easier to keep
track of things on paper or in excel. Personal preference of course.
Personally, if the show is less then about 20 fixtures, its easier to keep everything in my head and not need to worry about any of the paperwork (mainly because updating paperwork whenever anything changes gets annoying). More then 30 or 40 fixtures, its defiantly nice to have paperwork and nice visual plots, and once you get past 70 fixtures, it really becomes necessary (for me) to use proper paperwork to keep everything in check.
Hope this helps, and I hope its readable. I got about 2.5 hours of sleep last night, so I'm kind of running on empty here.
Good luck,
Zac