What do you like best?
Vectorworks Spotlight is the widely accepted industry standard for lighting, projections, and sound design in live entertainment. It can also generate XML files that can be read and modified by third party applications to extract the data attached to objects in the Vectorworks drawing. The feature set within the application is extensive, and there is a way to accomplish nearly anything you might need to do from within Spotlight without having to use add-on software.
What do you dislike?
The overall stability and reliability of Vectorworks is not what it should be, to the point where I typically feel the need to save after every series of operations I perform. Sometimes features randomly glitch out until the program is restarted, and sometimes updates and upgrades to the software break interoperability with other programs that rely on Vectorworks' XML data file. The annual upgrade cost compared to the new features that are added in each release is very steep.
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
We use Spotlight to create, edit, view, and print technical drawings for live entertainment. We can also use Vectorworks to create XML files which third party applications can read to generate other necessary paperwork and documentation. With Vectorworks being the de-facto standard platform in our industry, it's necessary to have and use Spotlight to get the job done.
