Explore the process of designing a lighting plan in a specific area, including the use of guidelines for placement and the implementation of specific dimensions for light fixtures. Understand the role of various tools and techniques such as annotation, detail lines, and the mirror draw axis for optimal placement.
Key Insights
- The article guides readers through the process of creating a lighting plan using guidelines to help with light placement and providing dimensions for light fixtures.
- Various tools are utilized throughout the process, including annotation, detail lines, and the mirror draw axis function which helps in maintaining symmetry in the design.
- The article highlights the option to customize and adjust the design, like changing the scale view or cleaning the reference planes, to ensure the design is easy to read and understand.
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I'm now going to go back to my ceiling plan, and I'm going to draw in some guidelines that are going to help me determine where the lights are going to go. This is a helpful step to do ahead of time, and it also allows us to provide dimensions for the light fixtures.
So I’m going to select Annotate > Detail Line. I’m going to start by drawing some vertical lines, and the line style I want to use is Center Line.
This first line is going to be three feet six inches from the edge. You can see it’s currently at two feet five, but we’ll change that to three feet six. Then I’ll draw another one.
That one is going to be three feet six inches from the opposite face. Now I want four light fixtures total—two on each side. So I’m going to copy this over twice.
I'm not really worried about where it's going to be because I’ll place another dimension across all three lines and then set it to “Equal.” That will center the fixtures evenly between the outer references. So I’ll have two more lines now.
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I'm going to take this line and, remember how we used the Mirror—Draw Axis tool? We’re going to do the same thing here because we want the lights to be three feet six inches away on both sides. We’ll use Mirror—Draw Axis at 45 degrees, and that will set the horizontal spacing for those lights as well.
That gives me the three-foot-six spacing. We can just double-check these dimensions for the lights. I’m going to change the scale of this view because it’s starting to feel tight—I'll set it to ¼” = 1’-0”.
This will make it easier to kind of read how everything fits together. The next guideline I need will run down the middle, and that one’s easy—I can just find the midpoint of the space.
I’m going to use the Match Type tool. If you’re not familiar with it, that's going to be keyboard shortcut MA. I’ll select the line with the desired type—Center Line—and apply it to the midpoint line.
If you’re thinking, “Man, there are a lot of reference planes and lines here, ” feel free to clean things up by deleting some of them.
We don’t need all of the ones from the curtain wall work we did earlier. Those can be removed. Now we can clearly see what the layout is going to be.
We’re going to have lights at each of these intersections. Then we’re going to add a specialty fixture along the centerline.
The first step is to go ahead and add our can lights, which will serve as the perimeter lighting.
Next, we’ll load in the feature lighting and add those as well.
