Select a room and click 💡 Lighting layout… in its panel. Choose the fixture, set Max spacing across and Max spacing along, the Edge margin, the Mounting height and the Angle, and the canvas previews the grid while the panel counts the lights. Create places them as one pattern that belongs to the room, so reshaping the room re-lays the lights, and every edit to the layout is one undo step.
Setting it up
The panel takes the room’s place while the layout is being set up, and nothing touches the drawing until you click Create.
- Fixture — Downlight, Ceiling light or Pendant light.
- Max spacing across and Max spacing along — the most any two lights may be apart, along each axis of the room. Gridsnap fits as many lights as the room allows at no more than that pitch, spread evenly. Both start at 1800 mm.
- Edge margin — how far the outermost lights stay from the walls, the same on every side. It starts at 600 mm, or less in a small room, and can never exceed a fifth of the room’s shorter side.
- Mounting height — where the fixture meets the ceiling. For a pendant that is the top of the cord, not the shade.
- Angle — turns the grid within the room, for a room that is not square to the drawing.
The footer counts the lights the rule places. Cancel keeps the room as it is. Create is disabled while no light fits: the panel says No lights fit inside this room with a … mm edge margin. Reduce the margin.
An L-shaped room keeps its notch empty: the grid is laid over the room’s outline, and any light that would land outside it is left out.
After Create
The lights are an ordinary pattern hosted by the room, and the panel for it is headed Lighting layout:
- Fixture swaps every light for another kind, keeping the ceiling contact.
- Mounting height moves them all.
- Lights counts them.
- ⌘-click one light to drop it with Backspace or nudge it off its slot with the arrow keys; the rest of the layout stays live.
- Explode pattern turns the lights into ordinary furniture and removes the rule.
Move, resize or reshape the room and the lights follow. Press R with the room selected and the grid turns with it.
Mounting height and head room
The mounting height is written as the fixture’s height above the floor, so the 3D view shows a pendant hanging from the ceiling and a downlight flush with it. A fixture lowered until its body drops below 2000 mm is in the way of people, and the panel says so: At this height the fixture hangs under head height — the plan check treats it as something standing there. Raise it, or mean it. A mounting height above 6000 mm is reported as an error.
What this doesn’t do
- It says nothing about light levels. Spacing, margin, height and angle are geometry; there is no lux, no compliance and no recommendation. The defaults are starting points, not standards.
- It does not read the ceiling height. The mounting height is yours to set; a vaulted or sloping ceiling is not followed.
- The lights are not in the furniture schedule or the quantity takeoff. Explode the pattern when you need them counted there.
- One margin, all sides. The layout cannot sit closer to one wall than the others.