Landscape Design Software - Adding a Pool Light

Landscape Design Software

Adding a Pool Light

Swimming pools can be entertaining at both day and night. Well placed lighting can dramatically improve the appearance of your client's swimming pool and surrounding landscape during low light conditions. When viewing your landscape design at sunrise, sunset, or in the evening, Realtime Landscaping Architect will automatically turn on the lights during a realtime walkthrough.

Pool lights are very similar to landscape lights, and in fact both can be used interchangeably.

To add a pool light:

1. Click Add Pool Light.

2. Select the desired light by clicking the picture in the property window.

3. Click to add the light. Hold Ctrl while you click to add more than one.

4. Move, rotate, and scale the light into the desired position.

The following landscape design uses pool lights for the lights inside the swimming pool and around the pool decking. The porch lights were added using the House Light object.

Tips:

• Placing lights inside swimming pools is a bit more involved than usual because you need to set their rotation angle and elevation. To make this easier, use the plan view to position the light relative to the edge of the pool and to set the rotation angle. Then, switch to perspective view and set the elevation. See Adjusting the View if you are not yet comfortable working in both views.

• You can also use landscape lights to compliment your pool designs.

• Lights will only come on during a realtime walkthrough when the time of day has been set to sunrise, sunset, or evening. See Environment Settings for more information.

• Lights can be any color.

• If grid snap is enabled, it might be difficult to place the light exactly where you want it. Press Ctrl+G to disable grid snap. See Snap Settings for more information.

• You can also add lights to houses. See Adding a House Light for details.

• To decrease the brightness of a light, either reduce the wattage or select a darker shade of the light's color.