RTD STRETCH: Overview
An in-depth guide to what RTD Stretch does and why it changes the economics of designing a stretch tent.
⏱ The promise, in one paragraph
RTD Stretch turns a stretch tent design from an afternoon of drafting into a few minutes of thinking. You describe a tent in the language of a tent - a span, a few heights, a pole layout - and it builds a complete, accurate 3D model on screen, with its cables run, its guys hung and its fabric draped, ready to adjust, present and export. When the brief changes, and it always does, you change a number and the whole design rebuilds itself. That single shift, from drawing lines to describing intent, is where the hours and the money go back into your business.
🔧 The problem RTD Stretch solves
Traditional CAD is a superb general-purpose ruler. It will draw whatever you tell it, exactly, and nothing more. That is also its weakness for tent work. A blank sheet does not know what a kingpole is, that a bale ring hangs below it, that cables run between the peaks and sag under their own tension, or that the fabric drapes into a doubly curved surface between them. So you draw all of it, by hand, line by line and point by point. It is slow, it is skilled, and it is fragile: a client asking to move one pole two metres can mean redrawing a good part of the picture, because nothing in the drawing understands how the parts relate.
RTD Stretch was built the other way round. It already knows what a stretch tent is. The relationships between poles, rings, cables and fabric are built in, so you work at the level of the design decision, not the level of the line. The result is not a faster way to draw. It is a different activity: you shape a structure that maintains itself.
⚡ Where the time actually goes
The saving is not vague. It is concentrated in the parts of the job that are slowest and most error-prone by hand, and RTD Stretch does each of them for you.
▸ Setting out the plan, poles and heights ➜ type a span, widths, pole counts and heights; the layout is generated at once
▸ Drawing the draped membrane surface ➜ a form-finding solver settles the fabric into a natural tented shape automatically
▸ Running ridge and valley cables and sagging them ➜ cables are generated and sagged with a single slider each
▸ Standing kingpoles, trusses, bale rings and mushrooms ➜ placed and dropped automatically from the layout you chose
▸ Hanging guy lines and side guys with forks ➜ drawn automatically, with anchor and catenary fork options
▸ Revising after a client change ➜ change one value; the whole model rebuilds coherently, cables and all
▸ Producing plans, reports and exports ➜ all generated from the same model, so they always agree
▸ Re-drawing separate site and seating layouts ➜ built-in planners share the one model
A design that takes two to six hours in conventional CAD takes minutes in RTD Stretch, and every revision after that is a change of numbers rather than a redraw.
💡 A different way to design
Speed alone is only half the story. The deeper value is what that speed does to the creative part of the job. Conceptual design is the act of exploring options and finding the good idea. It thrives on cheap, fast iteration and dies under slow, expensive commitment. RTD Stretch makes iteration almost free, and that changes how you think.
You explore instead of commit
Because a change is one number and a rebuild is instant, you can try ten configurations in the time a drawing programme would render one. Raise the kingpoles and watch the roof lift. Add a pole row and see the spans tighten. Swap a single centre mast for a twin row or a truss and compare the silhouettes side by side. Nothing is precious, because nothing took an afternoon to draw, so you experiment freely and arrive at a better answer. You are no longer rationing your ideas against your drafting time.
You design in the language of the structure
You are not thinking in arcs and offsets. You are thinking in kingpoles, bale ring drop, catenary sag, edge cable ratio and arc height - the actual vocabulary of a stretch tent. The controls map directly onto the decisions a tent designer makes, so the tool disappears and the design comes forward.
You get the consequences immediately
As you shape a concept, the Statistics update live: overall span, fabric surface area, floor area, average and key heights, kingpole spacing. You are never designing blind. You can feel the cost and the coverage of an idea while you are still forming it, because the fabric area and footprint that drive both are on the screen as you drag. A concept that looks beautiful but doubles the fabric bill tells you so at once.
You can show it, in the room, now
A concept only lands when the client can see it. RTD Stretch is presentation-ready from the first minute. Orbit to any angle, drop to a clean orthographic view for a drawing-like read, or place the tent onto a photograph of the actual site so the client sees it where it will stand. Export the view as an image with your logo and caption. The conversation that used to wait for next week happens in the meeting, while the idea is warm.
You can test whether the concept actually works
A good concept is not just a shape; it has to serve the event. RTD Stretch lets you check that at concept stage, not after. The Site Planner drops the real modelled tent onto a scaled site with car parks, access roads, toilets, staging and fencing at true sizes, so you can see whether it fits the ground. The Seating Planner fills it with tables and chairs, counts the guests, checks exits against recognised fire guidance, and prints the guest and door lists. You can answer will it fit, will it seat them, and will it pass while the concept is still a concept.
You can talk about siting and wind straight away
The Wind Sym view paints an indicative picture of how wind pressure reads across the canopy, with a colour map, contours and streamlines that follow the roof. It is a visual aid, honestly labelled as indicative rather than an engineering calculation, and that is exactly what a concept conversation needs: a clear, immediate way to explain to a client or crew why the tent faces the way it does. There is no study to commission and no wait.
🛠 The capabilities, and what each one gives you
✓ Instant parametric modelling - type the plan span, widths, pole counts, corner radius and the side and kingpole heights, and the tent appears. The whole set-out, the slowest manual task, is generated; revisions are a keystroke, not a redraw.
✓ Automatic structure - ridge and valley cables with adjustable sag, guy lines and side guys with anchor and catenary forks, bale rings, mushrooms, kingpole trusses and stiffening cables, all generated from the layout. These are the fiddliest, most error-prone things to draw by hand; here they are settings that update live and stay consistent with the rest of the model.
✓ Form finding - seven mesh solvers settle the membrane into a natural doubly curved shape, from pure node averaging through rubber sheet, conveyor belt, smoothing and a taut latex feel, with coarse and medium options for fast exploration. A believable draped surface is almost impossible to draw convincingly by eye; here it is automatic.
✓ The Builders - the Stretch Tent Builder places poles freely on a grid; the Round Tent Builder builds round and radial plans. Irregular and round concepts that would be a nightmare to set out by hand become a guided few minutes.
✓ Pole-level control - tap any pole to set its exact position and height, tilt it, hide it, override its guys, create a buddy pole with its own guy and cable, switch its material, or convert it to a truss. You get parametric speed for the whole and CAD precision for the one pole that needs it, without leaving the model.
✓ Metres and feet - one switch changes the whole panel between metres and feet, while the design is always stored in metres. You design in the client's language from the first sketch, with no risk of a conversion error, because there is nothing to convert underneath.
✓ Project identity on everything - record the Project, Client and Job Number once; they print on the report and lead the names of the exported files. Drawings identify themselves and file themselves by job.
✓ Presentation and views - fly-around and fixed camera presets, perspective or orthographic, backgrounds from a site photo, and one-click image export with logo and caption.
✓ The whole-event planners - the Site Planner for the ground around the tent and the Seating Planner for tables, chairs, capacity, fire compliance and guest lists. The questions that decide whether a concept is viable are answered from the same model, not from a separate stack of drawings.
✓ Clean exports for the whole chain - a flat or full 3D DXF with every element on its own layer, a membrane engineering file, a dimensioned report, and Collada, OBJ, glTF and STL for visualisers and 3D printers. The design drops straight into CAD, membrane software, a visualiser or a printer with no rework, always in metres, the unit those tools expect.
✓ Confidence to experiment - undo and redo across a hundred steps, automatic saving every few seconds, and a recovery banner after any crash. You experiment boldly because nothing can be lost.
📋 A concept, start to finish
To make it concrete, here is the arc of a single enquiry.
1. The brief lands: a 25 by 20 metre stretch tent for a wedding of 150, on a sloping lawn, client based in the United States and thinking in feet.
2. Two minutes in, you have a tent on screen: span and heights typed, a twin kingpole layout chosen, the roof form-found, cables and guys generated. You switch the panel to feet so it reads in the client's language.
3. You explore. Single mast versus twin row versus a truss; higher eaves; a deeper catenary sag for a more dramatic edge. The Statistics show the fabric area climbing as you lift the roof, so you balance drama against cost as you go.
4. You test viability. The Seating Planner packs the round tables, confirms 150 seats with comfortable clearances, checks the exits, and prints a capacity note. The Site Planner drops the tent onto a scaled site with parking and access to prove it fits the lawn.
5. You present. You drop a photograph of the lawn behind the model, orbit to the hero angle, and export an image with your logo. The client sees their wedding, on their lawn, in feet, in the meeting.
6. You hand off. Project, client and job number set once; a layered DXF for the workshop, a membrane file for the patterning, and a dimensioned report for the file, all named by job.
The traditional route to the same place is days and several separate drawings. Here it is one sitting and one model.
🎯 Why the approach works
▸ It understands tents, so you do not have to draw them. The whole saving flows from one design decision: the relationships of a stretch tent are built into the tool. You are steering a structure that knows how to hold itself together, which is why a single changed number produces a coherent redesign rather than a broken drawing.
▸ It is honest about what it is. RTD Stretch is a modelling and conceptual design tool, not an engineering calculator, and it says so plainly, including in the Wind Sym view. That honesty keeps the professional scope clear and sets the right expectation, while still giving you everything you need to design, present and hand off with confidence.
▸ It runs anywhere, with nothing to install. It is a single self-contained web page that runs in an ordinary browser, on a desktop or a tablet. There is nothing to install, nothing to license onto a workstation, and a saved design reopens exactly as it was.
▸ It protects your work and your time. Automatic saving, crash recovery and full undo mean the tool never punishes experimentation. Everything you produce carries its version and date, so you always know which design a file came from.
In short
RTD Stretch does not just draw stretch tents faster. It changes what designing one feels like. The slow, skilled, fragile drafting is gone, replaced by fast, fearless exploration in the language of the structure, with the cost, the fit, the capacity and the client's view all a moment away. For conceptual design, where the whole game is trying more ideas and showing them sooner, that is not a small improvement. It is a different way to work.
