Commercial Indoor LED Lighting (Metric)
8 min read
February 12, 2021
Following up from last week's imperial lighting release, our latest collection of Revit content is a set of metric manufacturer-specific families for commercial and industrial indoor lighting systems. These include a selection of office lighting such as downlights, linear lights and also some linear battens for industrial lighting. With a variety of mounting methods such as ceiling recessed, surface mounted and suspended, this small collection can be used for front and back of house.
Focus on LEDs
For the purposes of facilitating more sustainable design and lower environmental impact, we've created this collection with a focus on LED lighting fixtures. There are a number of well known environmental issues with the use of traditional fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. While there are several options for more eco-friendly lighting design including CFL (compact fluorescent light) and halogen, LEDs are the most efficient option.
Some of the most important benefits of LED lighting include:
- Longer life span than traditional bulbs.
- Mercury-free and lower use of potentially hazardous materials.
- More energy efficient than conventional bulbs.
- Emit very little heat compared to incandescent or CFL bulbs.
- Cost efficient over long periods of time.
- Emit light in a specific direction, reducing the need for reflectors and diffusers.
- LEDs are brighter which means fewer total luminaires are needed.
Project Needs & Usability
Lighting fixtures come in many shapes and forms, but one thing that is consistent among the majority of what's out there is the focus — no pun intended — on detailed geometry at the expense of actual functionality — e.g. missing connectors and photometric data. Lack of 2D elements — essential to display symbols in plan views — is often missing, too.
These Revit families utilise three levels of details to offer optimum performance at all stages of building development. Especially for the downlights, we have tried to make the most of materials to show the intricate body as opposed to showing these fins with geometry. This helps to keep file size to a minimum.
All of the LED lighting fixtures in this collection have been created to allow for use from project design through stage 4c mock-up drawings. Similar to their imperial counterparts these metric luminaires have an instance parameter to facilitate the rotation of light fixtures to suit an ever-fluid building design where the orientation of ceilings and rooms can change daily. The symbols also have vertical and horizontal offsets that will affect the coarse LOD only.
Some of the lighting fixtures include emergency lighting types — reflected in the symbol and, in most cases, a larger LED driver to allow for integrated emergency backup.
Installation Methods & Naming Conventions
From experience, naming conventions used for lighting fixtures tend to vary wildly. While in most other Revit categories the type is used as the first part of the name, lighting fixtures don't. Of all the methods, using the subtype first, e.g. Downlight, seems a sensible approach, but given the variety of these — floodlights, sconces, linear troughs, battens, etc. — and their function, we followed the same standard as for other categories, with "Luminaire" as their type:
Family Type – Sub Type – Manufacturer – Mounting Type – Indoor/Outdoor – Description 1 – Description 2
Example:
Luminaire-Downlight-Glamox-Ceiling Recessed-Indoor-LED-12-21 W
A vital part of this naming convention is the mounting type/method. Below is a list of the common mounting methods a light fixture can have and definitions:-
- Ceiling Mounted – mounted to underside of ceiling.
- Ceiling Recessed – fits flush within the ceiling.
- Ceiling Pendant – pendant hung (cable/wire) from the underside of a ceiling.
- Ceiling Suspended – suspended from the underside of a ceiling via chain and v-hook.
- Surface Mounted – mounted to ceiling, wall, or framework.
- Wall Mounted – mounted to wall.
- Wall Recessed – fits flush within the wall.
- Pendant – no ceiling. Placed at reference level or false ceiling height. Pendant hung but supported from framework or slab.
- Suspended – no ceiling. Placed at reference level or false ceiling height. Suspended from framework or slab via chain and v-hook.
Note the difference between Ceiling Pendant/Suspended and the Suspended/Pendant versions. All of our luminaire families are face based and should be used primarily in a ceiling plan. The Ceiling Pendant models are placed on the ceiling and their "suspended height" instance parameter drives how low they are from the ceiling.
The Suspended models work differently. They are intended for use in areas where there is no ceiling, back of house areas such as corridors and plant rooms. They are still face based, and can be placed on a reference plane or pseudo ceiling. The "suspended height" instance parameter in this occasion shifts the chain installation point upwards to the slab or framework. We also utilise Revit shape handles — also know as 'grippies' — on these suspended models so the user can grab the end of the chain or pendant and shift it up to the desired location, and even lock the alignment if needed.
These luminaires all have the appropriate connectors to be added to power and control systems. In the near future, we will release a Lighting Controls collection, which will interact with these Revit lighting fixture families to create precise control circuits and comprehensive deliverables.
Similar to the imperial lighting collection, all of our LED luminaires have a light source driven by the manufacturers photometric web file (IES file). This IES file is actually stored within the type catalogue. Although this means the type catalogue loads slightly slower than normal, the benefit is that the end user doesn't need to path any IES file.
Downlight Luminaires
Providing accent and task lighting, our ceiling recessed LED downlights are from manufacturers Thorn and Glamox.
Linear Luminaires
Providing ambient lighting, our series of linear LED lights are from Thorn and Whitecroft. With options for ceiling recessed, surface mounted, wall mounted and suspended versions, they can be used for back of house and industrial scenarios.
Get the Collection
Click here to view and download the full collection.
Collection Content List
- Three ceiling recessed LED downlights from Thorn.
- Surface mounted LED linear batten from Thorn.
- Wall mounted LED linear batten from Thorn.
- Suspended LED linear batten from Thorn.
- Ceiling recessed LED downlight from Glamox.
- Ceiling recessed LED linear light from Whitecroft.
- Surface mounted LED linear batten from Whitecroft.
- Wall mounted LED linear batten from Whitecroft.
- Suspended LED linear batten from Whitecroft.
Want More Content?
All of our free Revit collections are part of Kinship Content+, a service providing companies with on-demand Revit content creation as well as access to a pool of existing Revit families from other customer requests and our own internal development.
If you have any comments, or suggestions for components you wish were in this collection, please let us know at hello@kinship.io.
