Advanced Plug-in for AutoCAD & ADT

Press Release

Advanced Plug-in for AutoCAD & ADT Adds Volume and Lens Effects

 

Design & Drafting Ships ACADLighting
For AutoCAD® 2000 - 2002, Architectural Desktop & MCAD
Professional Lighting with volume and lens effects is now available.

OAK LAWN, ILLINOIS, May 31, 2003, - Design and Drafting, a subsidiary of Chicago Stage Equipment, Inc., an industry leader in theatrical & entertainment lighting design products, today started worldwide shipment of ACADLighting for AutoCAD® 2000 - 2002 Architectural Desktop & MCAD. ACADLighting will be available for AutoCAD 2004 in July.

ACADLighting plugs directly into AutoCAD® 2000 - 2002 Architectural Desktop or MCAD, and enables you to easily and quickly add architectural, theatrical or entertainment lighting with atmospheric & lighting effects to your projects.

ACADLighting is aimed at Architects, Mechanical Engineers, Set & Scenic Designers in an easy to use package. Sophisticated, streamlined, intuitive lighting and animation wizards, ensure that you will get started quickly without having to become a lighting designer or animator to produce outstanding work quickly.

"AutoCAD and Architectural Desktop users can now, for the first time, easily create high-end, photo-realistic images and animations with professional lighting, including atmospheric & lighting effects. Users with VIZ or 3D Studio on their computer, can take advantage of VIZLink. A feature, that at the push of a button, will open and load your current work into VIZ 4 or 3D Studio including lights, textures, gobos and objects," says Rufus Warren, President of Design & Drafting. With an AutoCAD-native interface, users can leverage their knowledge of AutoCAD and be productive from the start.

The VIZLink feature won product of the year at LDI 2002.

Product highlights
ACADLighting brings together 15 years of experience to offer you the easiest, most cost-effective way to add lighting and animation to your work. With drag and drop, point and click, high-end lighting and animation tools are an interface already familiar to Autodesk users. Adding professional lighting and animation to your work has never been easier.

Lighting
Auto Illumination is only one of the advanced lighting wizards in ACADLighting for creating professional lighting. Users can point at an object they want to light and ACADLighting will place the light fixtures in the drawing and light the object.

Atmospheric & Lighting Effects
High-end lighting effects include; Volume, Noise, Glow, Ray, Ring Star, Streak, Auto & Manual Secondary

Animation
Animation tools are easy to use. Draw a polyline for the camera path, place a camera on the line then use the animation Wizard to create amazing fly-bys and walk-through. What could be easier?

Transparent Link to VIZ or 3D Studio
At anytime during the design process, with a simple click, VIZLink will search your computer for and load your current work into VIZ or 3D Studio, including lights, textures, gobos, animation path, and objects.

VIZLink
A key feature of ACADLighting VIZLink allows the user to link lighting projects from ACADLighting into Autodesk® VIZ application including lights, gobos projection, rope lights, projectors and images, camera and motion paths and also atmospheric and environment effects. Using the VIZlink feature, users can produce a more realistic representation of what designs will look like under a variety of lighting conditions, natural and artificial. VIZLink feature won product of the year at LDI 2002.

User Reaction
David Mollner, President of DMLDC says: "So this is what makes your product surpass everybody else's program! This is what I have wanted for quite some time. Communicating our designs and ideas to others is a major part of our business. Being able to build, light and animate in AutoCAD and then to have it auto-load into VIZ is amazing. The VIZLink alone, has cut our design time by 35%."

Availability
ACADLighting is available now from Design & Drafting, priced at $495.00

For more information visit ACADLighting or call (708) 499-0107

About Design & Drafting
In a short time, Design & Drafting has grown into one of the industry's leading lighting design software companies. Design & Drafting provides solutions that combine industry-leading software with innovative ideas.

Design & Drafting's goal is simple, but far-reaching to deliver the tools needed to help the customer quickly create real, tangible results.

Helping to make the most of the design, from initial concepts and drafts through the final build only Design & Drafting offers such a great return on investment in real time, inspiring feedback, and savings of time and effort, encompassing the entire project and opening a whole world of possibilities.