Cornell University - Department of Theatre, Film and Dance

 VectorWorks 2008: Tutorials for the Theatre

written for the course THTR 263: VectorWorks Design Studio for Theatre

by Kent Goetz

page updated 8/11/08

The tutorials I have written for the course THTR 263 , "VectorWorks Design Studio for Theatre" at Cornell University lead the user through a series of design activities in a theatrical context using the CAD application VectorWorks 2008:Spotlight with Renderworks. The tutorials range from 25 - 50 pages and takes 3-5 hours to complete. They are available free to the general public. However, if you benefit from my efforts and feel compelled to express your gratitude, I would welcome a donation of $5 per tutorial sent to: Kent Goetz, 937 Harford Slaterville Rd, Dryden, NY 13053 or to my email address using PayPal. klg2@cornell.edu

If you decide to download my tutorials, I would appreciate it if you would send me your name, affiliation/profession, city/state, email address, and which tutorials you downloaded, so I can keep you updated on future upgrades. I will email you a confirmation receipt of any payment you send. I would also appreciate hearing your comments on any errors or confusions you discover and on ways to improve upon the tutorials for future users.

Important -- Each tutorial has been converted to a PDF file that can be viewed on screen or printed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click on the thumbnails in the left column to view samples of final tutorial projects. Depending on your browser, you should be able to click on the names of the files in the right column to download them to your hard drive. I discovered that the Mozilla Firefox 3.0 allows this easily, but Safari may not. In Explorer, right/click (Windows) or control/click (Mac) on the link should work. If you are having difficulty, contact me and I'll email you the needed files as attachments.

Testimonials from users

Tutorial #1 - Drafting the Floorplan (1.7mb/34pages)

VW2008 Fundamentals required

VW08TutrlItems.vwx

Sample project - VW08TutrlPlan.vwx

Tutorial #2 - Modeling Scenic Space (2.5mb/41pages)

VW2008 Spotlight required

VW08TutrlItems.vwx

Sample project- VW08TutrlModeling.vwx

Tutorial #3 - Lighting, Texturing and Rendering (3.5mb/25pages)

VW2008 Spotlight with RenderWorks required

Clouds.jpg | Figure1.jpg | Figure2.jpg | Pattern.bmp | Popcorn.jpg

Sample project - VW08TutrlRendering.vwx

VW2008 Fundamentals required.

Spotlight with RenderWorks recommend for Introduction to Modeling, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering

VW08TutrlItems.vwx

Wallpaper. jpg | Clouds.jpg

Sample project - VW08TutrlFrontEl.vwx

Tutorial #5 - Drafting the Light Plot (1.5mb/27pages)

Linked to VW2009 tutorial update which is in essence the same as VW2008 except for some Preferences options.

VW2008 Spotlight required

VW08TutrlItems.vwx

LtPltTheatre (DXF file) | LtPlt Scenery (DXF file)

Sample project - VW08TutrlLightPlot.vwx