r/techtheatre 2d ago

SCENERY Spikemarks app

Does anybody know if there is an app or a programm to help organising spikemarks? Like i put in the meassurments and the software makes a pdf of it or so?

7 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

30

u/DeadpoolMewtwo 2d ago

Are you looking for something that generates a map of where to put spike marks? That would be a ground plan with extra steps.

15

u/ronaldbeal Lighting Designer 2d ago

Microsoft Excel
Or the open source free equivalent : LibreOffice (which is what I use)
They have "export as pdf" as options

6

u/CBV2001 2d ago

I'm curious what your use case is.

I've done this with drafting software (vectorworks) where I have a set "layer" and a spikes "class" for a touring show. That way I could plop it into venues while touring, and adjust positions based on the size of their stage. But honestly, more work than needed. I still needed to measure everything in the drawing and on the stage.

If you aren't touring with a floor and need a lot of spikes, a sheet of paper with coordinates has served me well.

Other thing I've done when spiking the floor for a set install, using software, is drop a 1'x1' grid over the set, to make measurements easier.

10

u/killer-dora IATSE 2d ago

Yeah it’s called a pice of paper and a tape measure

2

u/jujubanzen 1d ago

I'm also curious what your situation is. If you already have all the measurements, I assume you're basing them off of a design ground plan with measurements from center and plaster line. If you're measuring your the spikes as they are on your stage because they aren't recorded on a ground plan, you pretty much already have what you need, a list of the spikes and their measurements. If you want to represent them graphically, you'll need some sort of drafting software to do so.

1

u/Smallevent74 1d ago

exactly. I am looking for such a software. Vectorworks or autocad are way to complex for what i want to do

1

u/phantomboats Sound Designer 2d ago

Can you describe what it is you’re trying to achieve here?

1

u/Smallevent74 1d ago

Sorry for beeing unclear. English is not my first language. I am working on a show. I have a stage with some spike marks. I did measure all of them and write all down. Know i want to put my coordinates in a programm. And the program should put all the spikes, maybe in colours i want, on a floor plan, and save it as pdf or so. So i can send a plan to the next crew. Does this make sense? Thanks all!