4.2 Electric Lighting Layout

These fields define the characteristics of a particular luminaire array while the reflected ceiling plan, shown below, displays the currently design overall layout. Lighting layouts are created from one or more Arrays of luminaires, and these Arrays are in turn assigned to one or more Zones.

The Electric Lighting Array pull-down menu selects the current electric lighting array for editing. Up to 10 electric lighting arrays can be defined and assigned up to 4 electric lighting zones. The lighting zones represent sets of fixtures that will be controlled together; electric lighting arrays simply provide a way to make ‘zones’ that do not have to be orthogonal in shape.

The Copy… pull-down menu allows you to make the currently selected Array a copy of a previously defined Array. Select the Array you want to copy from in this pull-down menu and a duplicate will be defined for the current Array. Notice, it will be directly on top of the copied Array and will need to be moved to a different location.

The button deletes the currently selected array.

The Luminaire Selection pull-down menu next to the Add button is used to assign any luminaire currently in the project to the current lighting array.

The Add button activates the Import Luminaires screen which allows the user to select a luminaire from a generic SPOT library or import .IES files to create personal libraries.

The Auto-Center pull-down menu provides the choice of auto-centering rows, columns, or both. When one of these options is selected, the corresponding inputs for row start and/or column start will be grayed out and set automatically.

Zone – This field defines which lighting Zone to assign the current electric lighting Array. Up to 4 Zones can be defined from the 10 possible electric lighting Arrays (A-J). The Zones are color coded and shown on the reflected ceiling plan.

Mounting Height – This field sets the height of the luminaires. If a positive distance is entered, this is the distance the center of the luminaire will be from the floor. If a negative distance is entered, this will the distance from the center of the luminaire to the ceiling at that position. This is a nice way in the case of a sloped ceiling to specify a layout that is either equidistant to the floor or equidistant to the ceiling. Enter 0 for recessed luminaires flush with the surface. For surface mounted fixtures slightly below the ceiling plane, enter a small negative distance.

Row Start – This field sets the distance of the first row from the south façade for the current array.

Column Start – This field sets the distance of the first column from the west (or left hand) façade for the current array.

Number of Rows – This field sets the total number of rows of the current array.

Number of Columns – This field sets the total number of columns of the current array.

Row Spacing – This field sets the distance between adjacent rows of the current array.

Column Spacing – This field sets the distance between adjacent columns of the current array.

Orientation – This field sets the orientation of the luminaires in the current array. An orientation of 0° aligns the width dimension of the luminaire (defined in the IES file) with the x-axis (length) of the space. A positive rotation rotates the luminaire counter clockwise.