Meet the Open Data Format that will Change the Entertainment Industry

Along with fellow leaders in the entertainment industry, MA Lighting for its lighting control solutions and Robe lighting for its high-quality moving lights, we are deIighted to announce a new development that will change the way lighting designers, fixture manufacturers, console manufacturers, and visualizers will work together. Our companies have joined forces to develop a new data format, named the General Device Type Format (GDTF), which creates a unified definition for the exchange of device data between consoles, CAD, and previsualization software.

“The industry has long been plagued by the absence of a standardized way to define the description of intelligent luminaires,” said Dr. Biplab Sarkar, CEO of Vectorworks. “Today’s exchange process is fraught with challenges. The workflows are disconnected, time-consuming, and often require the manual mapping of data with a high chance of error. General Device Type Format simplifies the entire process. It creates a common data exchange language that will be the basis of a fully connected workflow, from CAD to previz to console and back. We look forward to collectively working with additional manufacturers to extend the benefits of this high-quality workflow to the professionals of the industry.”

From left to right: Vectorworks CEO Dr. Biplab Sarkar, Robe lighting CEO Josef Valchar, and MA Lighting Technology Managing Director Gerhard Krude

With GDTF, luminaire manufacturers now have an open and universal data exchange format that can be read by any console manufacturer and be included in any CAD or previsualization software. No longer will custom, one-off interpretations of DMX values and conversions for specific control data be needed. The format is human-readable, royalty-free, and easy to implement and maintain.

We look forward to talking more about this game-changing development with MA Lighting and Robe lighting during the Prolight + Sound show in Frankfurt Germany. On Tuesday, April 10 at 2 p.m., our companies will discuss the announcement and present information about the GDTF during a press briefing at the Vectorworks booth, E60. 

For Vectorworks users, devices in Vectorworks Spotlight are currently being updated to support GDTF. Updates will be released in future service packs for Vectorworks 2018.