file extension LWL

Lightwright is a unique cross between a spreadsheet and a database, designed specifically to manage professional lighting design paperwork. If you'd like to see a 20-minute video tour of Lightwright, click here (requires a high-speed internet connection and Flash plug-in).

Lightwright understands what designers and electricians do with their paperwork. It knows that dimmers and circuits shouldn't be overloaded, that striplights have more than one color, that color scrollers have a whole series of colors and need a control channel, and that some lights don't use color at all!

Lightwright knows that you might need to change all of the R-33 in the sidelights to L-110 and it lets you make changes like these in ways that are blindingly fast, simple, and designed to fit the way you work instead of the way computers work.

It can find mistakes, compare two sets of paperwork, figure your circuit and dimmer needs, automatically renumber a pipe, renumber or rearrange your channels and dimmers, or even assign dimmers automatically based on your channels. You can enter text almost any way you want and use footnotes and ditto marks to cut down on typing and wasted paper.

It includes professional-standard focus charts, including sketches, imported photos or graphics, designer location, shutter cuts, beam edge and orientation, and other notes.

Lightwright knows you have work to do, so it includes a fully integrated work notes database, which can include notes that apply to specific lights or general notes that refer to channels, dimmers, or notes that refer to nothing in particular at all (such as "Where shall we have dinner?").

Lightwright has been the industry standard used by both designers and electricians around the world for over 20 years, and it won the Lighting Dimensions International Software Product of the Year award in both 1998 and 2003. In 2004, it was honored with an Eddy Award.

Lightwright was written by John McKernon, a professional designer and an associate designer to Ken Billington. Speed and accuracy are critical to professionals and the theatres they work in, so Lightwright's emphasis is on making changes quickly and easily while helping you spot potential errors with a minimum of effort. It is used every day on Broadway, in major and minor opera houses, ballet companies, regional theatres, community theatres, and universities. In the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Asia.

In this case it's literally true: The sun is always shining on someone using Lightwright.