Can you do lighting calculations in Revit? - Elum Tools

[@JavierOropeza08]

Really useful, I am arch and have always wanted to do my own calcs for this, but this is just one piece of the puzzle. Like you mentioned, bad data in, bad data out, so using elum tools or similar is kind of useless if you do not know what are common values for lighting, and what values are required for the calcs to work. When it comes to me as an arch working on an RCP, I have my go to families which really are used for graphic representation on the plan, I have no idea on its actual real life values, or if they have any built into them. I am sure there are times where the lights we show on our RCP works, but I bet they could be optimized if we knew about calcs, and what values matter when selecting a light, which we as arch do not, and leave that to the lighting consultants or the electrical team. That also leads to the engineers selecting their typical fixtures, which may or may not be as "nice" as we would have selected. Subbed, looking forward to learning more about the electrical side and seeing how I can use that to make my model better for the MEP engies, I pretty much maxed out my arch revit stats. I work in the US, someone in the comments mentioned no one uses foot candles...idk where he is getting that from, the code references minimum foot candles....

[@beaugarrison9680]

Ive been struggling with Elum tools for awhile, this is very helpful! Thank you!

[@theelectricaldepartment]

Glad it was helpful!

[@tech-wondo4273]

I did my Thesis using this ✅ if I remember correctly it’s based on renowned AGi32’s engine

[@theelectricaldepartment]

That’s pretty cool! And yea, I believe you’re right on the AGi32. It’s incredible how well it works, raytracing, number of bounces, surface properties, etc.

[@tech-wondo4273]

@@theelectricaldepartment I’m not an electric engineer; am an Architect; so I had to find something that was a bit user friendly; already embedded within Revit and simple to use, Glad you covered it because I barely knew how to use it back then 😂

[@jimblair9064]

Great work on this intro to Elum tools for Revit and some lighting basics. Is there any way to either render these values in Vray or other tools? Or to export these results for your room to a CAD file?

[@NRML_NKCNM]

Could you record a video on how to make emergency lighting? When we use Instance parameters for this.

[@theelectricaldepartment]

Oh yea sure. You mean how to calculate emergency lighting levels right?

[@NRML_NKCNM]

@@theelectricaldepartment correct! And how to calculate it all. You can set an IES file for this type, or you can just use a reduction in the coefficient, as I understand it?

[@kimstraat]

This is great, thanks for sharing! Quick Question, can you do you calcs / documentation in Elumtools, then produce pretty lighting renders in Enscape with the lighting shown correctly?

[@theelectricaldepartment]

It’s been a few years since I did a render with Enscape, I should revisit that. If I remember correctly, you should be able to render using the ies files loaded into the lighting fixture family. I know you can cycle the time of day in Enscape and see the building at noon vs nighttime and the lights should illuminate correctly.

[@fernandomartinich7650]

Foot candle? nobody in the world uses "candles" anymore as main source of lighting, same as for "foot" totally non-precise, erroneous unit... engineering is not only applying theoretical concepts, it must be engineering for construction, therefore there is great importance in using the most accurate way of measuring, building, fabricating, etc... which is the metric unit... and in the case of 3D models setting the units as millimeters. For the case of illuminance shall be LUX. Cheers