What others are saying

When I started using Vectorworks some 16 years ago I was fortunate to come across the Field Template SoftSymbol range not long after. They are the absolute benchmark for high quality, detailed and most of all clearly drawn symbols. They are the first ones I reach for when starting a new design and as a side by side comparison with the stock supplied VW symbols…well there is no comparison.

Max Conwell
Lighting Designer, Naked Eye Lighting Ltd., www.nakedeyelighting.com

Some [lighting designers] have always drawn their own symbols. If that’s the path you choose, that’s fine. For everyone else, there’s Steve Shelley and his SoftSymbols™. The range of products covered is remarkable. The price, given the amount of work that must be involved, remarkably low. Which is perhaps why they’re so widely used, particularly by lighting designers and their associates in America - a country that really does care about beautiful light plots. If you do too, check them out: this is a working classic, still in use daily...

Rob Halliday
Lighting Designer and Author for Light and Sound International, February 2020

What makes SoftSymbols so useful is that they are thoroughly researched, well made and above all, stick to some rigorous drafting standards that are maintained across the whole catalog.

Mark Doubleday
Lighting Designer, UK

Soft Symbols are my Vectorworks symbol library of choice, and have been since my tenure as Hubbard Street’s Lighting Director. Steve has created a product that is incredibly thorough, thoughtful, and well-organized. It looks great at any scale, is appropriate for every type of lighting gig, and could only have come from someone with his level of experience and attention to detail. It is an invaluable resource to me and will continue to be my go to library for the foreseeable future.

Matt Miller, Freelance Lighting Designer/Director
Chicago, IL

SoftSymbols are the symbol library of choice for the Lincoln Center Festival, and for all my other professional activities. They are cleanly built, graphically sophisticated, and the libraries are by far the most complete. There’s no other choice as far as I’m concerned.

Aaron Copp, Lighting Coordinator, Lincoln Center Festival, and freelance lighting designer
New York, NY

I did the Lab Rep Plot revisions with SoftSymbols. LOVE IT! So does the crew and the union House Elec. We also think the twenty-or-so production teams coming into the Lab this spring (who’ll receive print copies of this drawing) will love it too. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have SoftSymbols™ - I trust my layouts again, since your symbols are the same size as the objects they represent (DUH!), and my drawings look more like my drawings again. Woo hoo!

Martha Mountain, Freelance Lighting Designer
Washington DC

SoftSymbols™ TechNotes

Field Template SoftSymbols™ are a series of Object Libraries designed within the Vectorworks® environment. All of the 2 dimensional components of each symbol has been drawn with the following guidelilnes:

All symbol perimeters are black, 12 mil line width. Any internal lines are 6 mills line width. Lighting positions are all 21 mills line width.
Any text included within symbols is Arial, which is a cross-platform font between the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.
All symbols are drawn with white-filled bodies. Effort has been made to use reversible while and black, so that the body colors may be successfully inverted.
Any special demarcations are in a specific gray scale (RGB: 136, 136, 136.) There is no color used in any symbol.
All symbols that are symmetrical polygons have been constructed as two mirrored halves, and then "Add Surface" command has been invoked.
3D components have been converted to generic solids in an effort to keep file size to a minimum.
All symbols are drawn in 1/2” scale (Imperial), and data information in the LIR reflects that. The weight and cut color size is converted and inserted in the LIRM.

Changing scale from 1/2” to 1:25 metric requires only two VectorWorks commands. (To change the scale, refer to the “Data Tab Notes” portion of the SoftGuide.) If weight calculations or cut color sheets are not required in metric scale, then the Imperial symbols can be used in metric drawings after changing the scale.

SoftSymbols™ Nomenclature

Effort has been made to insure that all SoftSymbol™ resources used as lighting devices are hybrid symbols.

These resources have an asterisk (*) at the end of their name to distinguish them as a FIELD TEMPLATE SOFTSYMBOL™, and not a SpotLight symbol.

The resources that have an asterisk and a number sign (*#) are hybrid symbols that contain either numerals or text in the “nose” of the instrument to specify beam spread. The ETC symbols that represent HID instruments end with the letter “H” (H*).

All SoftSymbols are designed and constructed by Steve Shelley.

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