Discover the process of integrating lights into the design of open areas in building layouts. Learn about the usage of temporary grids, layering, and reference lines to accurately place lights in spaces such as break rooms and open office areas.
Key Insights
- Temporary grids and reference lines can be created to guide the placement of lights in open areas, ensuring they are spaced evenly and in line with existing structures.
- Using a consistent layering system, such as making the 'light layer' the current layer, aids in the orderly addition of components to the design.
- Measuring tools and commands within the design software can help validate the accuracy of placements and distances, ensuring the design integrity is maintained.
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Placing the office lights is fairly straightforward because we start with the grid and the lights fit right into the grid. But what about the lights in the open areas? Let's notice that the open to above area for our document room doesn't have any lights and it needs them. Well, let's go ahead and start by creating a grid that's a temporary grid to space out the lights and then we can delete that grid when we're done.
Let's be consistent with our layering and type in layer. And we want to activate the light layer, which is e-light, e-light. Double click, make it the current layer, and let's type in a line command, l-i-n-e.
And let's match the pattern that we already have in the reception area. Namely, they are 4'8 from the grid lines and the outside walls. So I'm going to start in the break room and there's this vertical grid line, grid line C. I'm going to click that.
And if you're not familiar with those grid lines, those are structural grid lines. They don't exist, we don't build them, but they help us know where the structure is. Essentially, you'll notice at the center crossroads between C and 2, there is a column, for example.
And there's another column at B and 2, A and 2. And those are the structural columns or supports for our building. 4'8. And they make for handy references.
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So there's our line at 4'8. We will go all the way through and back out the other side of the building and click and hit escape. Now we don't need this 4'8 line, it was just there as a spacer, so we'll delete it.
And now we need another one here. Let's go ahead and type in the word line. And we'll kind of hover over the bottom of this one just to line it up.
Click on that wall. Go to the left, type in 4'8, enter. And we'll go up and beyond the building again.
Click and escape. And delete that line. Now we're going to assume that the space between is 10 feet, but it never hurts to check.
We'll do DI. DI, enter, and check this dimension. And indeed we have 10 feet.
So that worked out pretty well for us. Let's go ahead and do the line command again. I'm going to follow grid line 2 all the way out to the right.
Click and go up. I'll type in 4'8, enter. And go to the left.
And click and escape. We'll delete that line. And we'll tackle this one a little bit differently.
Let's select this line and do CO to copy. Click, go up, and we'll type in the 10 feet this time instead. 10 feet, enter.
And there it is. I'll hit escape and I'll use my DI for distance command to measure from that line all the way to the back wall. And it is indeed 4'8".
Now we need one of these big 24-inch lights. So let's grab one right here. And we'll do CO to copy.
We'll grab right in its midpoint. And we'll click four times, once in each intersection. That looks pretty good.
Now we'll hit escape. Now I'm noticing that the break room lights are actually out of place. They're off a little bit.
Let's go ahead and grab one of these grid lines. Grab its blue dot, drag it straight down with ortho turned on. And see how they're off a little bit? I'm going to do that to this one here.
Let's zoom in so you can see that better. Grab that blue dot, drag it down a bit. And it's off.
Let's go ahead and create one from the open office area. I'll click right here in the center of one of these lights. And go to the right, and it's off in that direction too.
We'll click. These guidelines can be really helpful. Let's go ahead and grab the L4 and its light, and the other L4 and its light, and do M for move.
Click right in that center point. Click and take it to the intersection of our guideline. Alright, now everything lines up really good.
Now these guidelines, sometimes I'll actually leave them on. In this case, we'll go ahead and delete them. But either way is acceptable.
I'm going to select them all. We're done with them for now. And we will delete them.
And now we have lights throughout our facility.
