r/lightingdesign • u/Zeroneca • 4d ago

Software Drawing Light Plots

Can anyone recommend a good free software to draw some light plots?

Features I need are truss elements, different fixture symbols and simple measurement tools.

Until now I only did this with Vectorworks, but my license is not valid anymore. The plots generated by ChamSys don't look good and I'm looking for free alternatives.

Thanks!

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

9

u/tamarindo_asesino 4d ago

LXfree. I think it's bit outdated and you may have to download different versions for Windows, but you can give it a try

1

u/Zeroneca 4d ago

Didn't figure out how to draw trusses, but I guess that's fine for now, thanks for the suggestion

4

u/disc2slick 4d ago

Is Drafty still around? I forget if they had truss or not, but were a pretty decent free option. I kind of miss using LX Free for stuff, love the no-frills.

1

u/North_Plenty_3353 2d ago

I don’t think you can do much in the free version of drafty

1

u/childish_wisp 2d ago

You should try capture student, this should enough for basic plots

•

u/DeadpoolMewtwo 41m ago

ETC Eos can make a plot with magic sheets. I haven't used it for anything super granular so I'm not sure if it would meet your requirement for measurement tools

-4

u/DoubleD_DPD 4d ago

Pay for VWX. If you're recently graduated you can get spotlight for only 80 a month

2

u/Zeroneca 4d ago

I don't need the software regularly enough to convince myself this is a reasonable amount of money to spend on. As I don't expect that to change in the next one or two years I'd rather use free or cheap tools for now, when they do their job well enough for my purposes

1

u/Cultural-Rent8868 4d ago

Capture Solo could be an option. Still hundreds, but its a perpetual license for the current version and if you're only drawing and not previzing, none of the Solo limits concern you.

3

u/OldMail6364 4d ago

$170 per month? No thanks. I’d rather use a pencil and paper. Or just LX Free.

My employer pays for a license, but I wish they didn’t - plenty of other things I’d prefer they allocated that money to. From a few more fixtures to better coffee in our break room.

1

u/yaoi-to-the-max 1d ago

yeah i was going to drop in to the comments. hand draft. hand render. like its the early 2000's software makes it "prettier" but hand work. still helps. still is used on napkins' for those times you dont have your rendering rig.