Lamps

 

This will help you to make not only the "electrical" part of a complete lamp but to add and place the light bulbs and design the light beam produced by the bulbs. The lamp structure should be made previously using any of the available tools such as the Cube, Cylinder and Polygon.

Basically there are 3 major parts in the design,
  • The bulbs. You may have one or more. All bulbs are placed at the same altitude.
  • The vertical beam. This normally has a cone shape and may have an altitude different from the lamp structure.
  • The ground beam. This is the lighted polygon on the ground and is optional.

Beam and light information

Drawing mode

The Grid

Action

Note:

This picture does not represent the normal view or layout of a real lamp structure.

  • Place bulbs: This adds the lamps to the graphic. Lamps are drawn in yellow.
  • Draw beam polygon: This adds the layout polygon of the beam view from the top. Each polygon has a source of light, the top beam point, and a collection of points defining the beam light cone.
    • The first point will be always the source of light or the top beam point. This is shown in the graphic in green. This point position should be the same as the position of one of the bulbs in the structure.
    • All following added points will make the radials of the cone.
  • Start new polygon: If you have more than one source of light, such as a T lamp shape with two arms, then you will need to draw 2 polygons for the left and right side of the T. You can draw as many polygons as you want.
This is a typical drawing of a lamp with 2 beams. Notice that the bulbs (yellow points) and the cone sources of light (green dots) are placed at the same position.
This is a representation of the entire lamp structure in FS2K, a T lamp shape.

Other options ( New in v1.4)
 
You can now direct the beam to the ground( default position) to make a lamp, or also horizontally as well, as if you want to make a beacon or a lighthouse for example.

 

The draw template can help you to design the shape of the lamp beam in the ground, so you can add the points following the ellipse or circle lines.