Build the rig

Switch the Library to Trusses to hang things on.

Filter by system (type it in the search box), by ways, bend angle and chord, then drag the straight or corner you need. Each piece carries its real part number, so what you draw is what you order.

Primitives — the third tab — are the plain shapes you need for risers, walls, screens and set pieces:

Drop a Plane or a Cube, then give it real dimensions in Properties. They are there to stand in for the room and the set, so beams land on something and the plan reads as a stage rather than fixtures in mid-air.

Work with Move and Rotate and the tool modifiers on the toolbar; snapping rounds a drag to the grid spacing and a turn to 15°, and never changes trim — nudging a hung fixture sideways leaves its height alone.

Reading the plan: which way a fixture faces

Select fixtures in Plan and each one gets a ring and an orange chevron:

The ring says this one is selected — drawn beside the body rather than on it, so it still reads at the zoom where the whole rig fits on screen, and on top of the truss the fixture hangs from. The chevron says which way it is turned, and "turned" means something different depending on the fixture:

• A conventional is aimed, not turned. On a PAR, a profiler or a bar the front is the lens, so the chevron points where the light goes.

• A moving head is turned, not aimed. Its head goes wherever the desk sends it, so the beam says nothing about how it was rigged. The chevron points the way the base was hung — where the display is and where the cable leaves.

If a fixture faces straight at you or straight away — a PAR hung aimed at the floor, seen from the top — the chevron degrades to a dot. There is no side of the symbol to put an arrow on, and a dot is the honest answer.