Case Study: Stratford Festival achieves rapid on-site set design and troubleshooting with Autodesk AutoCAD mobile app

Set design onstage and offstage with the AutoCAD mobile app

Stratford Festival, a major theatre company in Ontario, needed a way to coordinate complex set design, installation, and urgent onstage troubleshooting—often while working with co‑producers and workshops in Quebec. Technical director Andrew Mestern turned to Autodesk’s AutoCAD mobile app to stay connected and view large 3D drawings on his phone or tablet instead of lugging a laptop.

Autodesk’s AutoCAD mobile app let Mestern open and orbit a 50 ft × 28 ft 3D set machine with four moving projection screens, share drawings on site, and quickly pinpoint problems (for example locating collapsed casters under a 20‑ft set piece). The result was faster collaboration and troubleshooting—issues were diagnosed and fixed within minutes, unnecessary trips to the shop were avoided, multiple failing casters were identified for replacement, and overall downtime and uncertainty for the stage crew were significantly reduced.

Stratford Festival

Andrew Mestern

Technical Director