Abstract: The traditional method of lightning protection scope design has many disadvantages, such as low efficiency and precision, and mistakes are very easy to be made in the drawing and calculating of the design. According to the characteristics of the thunder and lightning protection in South China, a visible design method of lightning protection scope based on AutoCAD is researched. An improved method is provided in order to avoid the repetitious counting by using the existing algorithm, which covers the cases of any number and different height of lightning rods, and computational efficiency is increased.

Key words: computer aided design, lightning protection research, lightning rod design, visualization