Review: Field Templates RULES! English Metric & Striplight Placemat Templates

People say that the old world charms are losing out to technology in this day and age of computers and the internet. It is faster and easy these days to shoot off a quick email, text or tweet to a person to say thank you or convey a message. What use to be the standard of taking time to hand write a note and send it in the mail has quickly evaporated and turned into pounding a keyboard, some quick mouse clicks and our message is sent instantly to a persons digital mailbox.

The same thing can be said about drafting these days.  With the wide assortment of computers aided Design Programs, (CAD), available to us, designing, updating and distributing our paperwork in a timely manner is just as easy. Before CAD programs, every thing was drafted by hand.  It is a true form of art in it’s own right.

If Steve Shelly has anything to say about it, the art of hand drafting is not totally lost.  In the past year, Mr. Shelly’s company, Field Templates has released two more plastic drafting templates to their LARGE collection of templates already available.  At USITT 2010, Field templates introduced the RULES! Striplight Placemat template and at LDI 2010, they released the RULES! English Metric template.

As with all of Field Templates “stencils”, they are made of 0.30″ thick semi transparent plastic and designed specifically for entertainment lighting drafting.  Field Templates does not just throw the most popular lighting symbols on to plastic and call it done.  They listen to designers, user and drafters and organize specific templates for the job.  From there the templates are laid out with Using the patented Pro*Trak 50 System, all of the symbols are pre-spaced 1′-6″ apart and aligned to horizontal axes (like a batten). This makes spacing and laying out your pipes quick and easy.

From there, Field Templates has added in numerous common fixture accessories and useful drafting aids to help make drafting quicker and easier. They pack a huge amount of information and guides along with the lights, accessories and guides not just cut through the plastic, but printed on the surface as well, such as scale rulers based on the scale of the template and reference points to help rotate fixtures on a pipe.

RULES! English Metric Field Template

As mentioned above, Field Templates has received a huge amount of request from designers and drafters over seas asking for metric specific templates to design with.  Field templates answered their calling with the RULES! English Metric Template.  What is really spectacular about the RULES! English Metric Template is that Field Templates laid out 32 fixtures and accessories not just in 1:25 scale, but repeated the 32 fixtures in 1:50 scale as well.  So one template is now giving you two scales two work in! Fixture symbols that are included range from ETC, Strand, Selecon, Robert Juliat, and Reich & Vogel along with some generic striplights and moving light symbols.

Two symbols that are included in the template is a headset cut out, which I think is pretty neat, but how useful, I am not sure.  The other symbol included is and electric symbol. This one confuses me a little as it was a huge request from the lampies over seas.  Someone from the UK will have to explain to me why a “lighting bolt” symbol for electric is required.

RULES! Striplight Placemat

The other template new from Field Templates in 2010 is exactly as it sounds, a template FULL of striplights.  Not just strip lights, but LED fixtures, some cyc fixtures and ground rows.  Again, Field Templates has added an assortment of accessories and profile cut outs to help draft striplights in a cross section.  The Striplights Placemat even includes gel cut sizes printed right on the template for quick reference. The template includes stencils for Color Kinetics, Selador, Source 4 Par strips, R40 and even MR16 strips.

Conclusion

Over all, both templates serve a specific use and offer a variety of choices for that specific use.  Both templates are MUCH larger then the traditional templates that many of us are accustomed to. They both roughly measure 10″ or more on the long edge.  Field templates is calling this an added feature as the templates can function as a separator in our huge production binder.

One thing I have always had an issue with ANY template, regardless of it it was made by field templates is that some symbols are a little close together and that small amount of plastic between them has the tendency to break.  Most times it is just a crack between the symbols, and not a huge problem as the symbol is still traceable.  In the RARE case, that small amount of plastic has completely snapped off.  Field template has designed all of their templates to minimize that.  With some love and care of your templates though, breakage should be minimal if any.

I love hand drafting when time allows and feel that it is an art form that could quickly disappear if not practiced on a regular bases. Pick up your favorite version of drafting templates from Fieldtemplate.com and draft by hand once and a while.  There is nothing like the smell of a #2 pencil and the feeling of producing a plot by hand.

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Save 45% On A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting

Looks like Amazon and Barns and Noble are having a pricing war over Steve Shelly’s latest book, a Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, Second Edition.  Both online book stores are selling the book at 45% off the cover price of $49.95 at $27.25!

If you didn’t know, here is a little background on Mr. Shelly’s book from Focal Press, the publisher. Construct and Implement Your Own Lighting Designs with the most trusted guide to stage lighting!

An entertaining and educational read, author Steven Louis Shelley draws from his 35+ years of diverse experience to bring you the step-by-step technical tools for getting the job done along with real-life examples of projects from start to finish. Learn why some techniques are successful while others fail with ‘Shelley’s Notes’ and ‘Shelley’s Soapbox,’ all with a humor that guides you through complex problems and concepts.

You can read the review of Mr. Shelly’s book here on iSquint.net. Head over to either amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com to purchase your copy of Mr. Shelly’s book with these amazing savings.

A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting, Second Edition

We received a message from Steve Shelly, the author of A Practical Guide To Stage Lighting, that the second edition of the book is getting ready to hit the shelves. The Second edition is 480 pages with over sixty new topics, twenty new forms and fifteen new drafting presentations not previously found in the first edition.

The first edition of PG2SL followed the process and explained one set of methods used to create and apply paperwork that culminated in a fully mounted lighting design for the musical Hokey. This second edition pulls back the wizard’s curtain to reveal the step-by-step processes involved in the creation and realization of that lighting design. Shelley expands his focus and provides his diacritical analysis into the methods and processes that take place to create the light plot and a lighting design in the first place.

From the back cover, Jim Moody writes:

If you are looking for esoteric design theory, this is not the book for you. However, if you need a get-down-to-business, everything you think you needed to know, nothing left out, lists of questions you should ask, answers you should consider, check lists, and the most extensive graphic layout of forms and focus information in any book, then this second edition has answered all your questions and a bunch you didn’t think you needed to know. You have got to have this book if you consider yourself a professional, period.

A Practical Guide To Stage Lighting, Second Edition goes on sale starting October 5, 2009 from Focal Press at $49.95 USD.  To learn more about the book and to get your copy, visit www.focalpress.com.