Lighting Fixture Schedule - Best Practice

As of now, my firm has a generic grid box with fixture tags on the left and a description of the light with some watt/lamp info on the right.

I was wondering if anyone else had a better approach - what's the best method of making a dynamic, easily manipulated fixture schedule?

Don't use autocad to create your schedules unless your using MEP or autocad electrical. Make your schedules in excel then import them as a table to your drawing.

We're running vanilla autocad(BDSP).

What's the benefit to importing excel tables?

Maybe this will help:

http://www.cad-notes.com/creating-schedule-from-your-autocad-drawing/

Thanks Rob, interesting.

Any other solution?

A more detailed description of what you want dynamic about it would help in getting responses tailored to your needs.

I'm not too specific, I just want to know my options so I can make an informed decisions when I make our schedules.

How are people in electrical consulting doing their fixture schedules? What's the benefit of excel tables?

I'm not too specific, I just want to know my options so I can make an informed decisions when I make our schedules.

You need to know how you want them to function before you can make an informed decision. Knowing how they function is also going to determine how you draw/input data into your fixtures.

What's the benefit of excel tables?

The link I posted should have answered that question for you.

If you make your schedules with excel then import them AutoCAD will treat them as a x-ref so any changes you make to the excel file you can update in AutoCAD. If you do a data extraction then you have to make sure that the blocks you use have all the correct info attached to them. Now if you were using the electrical AutoCAD or the MEP version the program would create the schedule for you as long as you have the catalog for the light fixtures your using. But from what I can tell your not using either one of those programs nor are you to concerned with creating a load calculation. You just want to know how many lights you will need where they are going and what wattage they will be using. No matter what method you choose to use there will a fair amount of prep work to be done in order for either method to work. Funny thing about CAD it makes you do a lot of work before hand so that you don't have to do a lot of work later. But anything that makes it run better is worth the work you put into it.

Funny thing about CAD it makes you do a lot of work before hand so that you don't have to do a lot of work later.

The same could be said for a lot of things. With technology moving at such a fast pace, many people forget the amount of preparation that goes into a quality product. It doesn't just happen with the turn of a switch or tap of a button.

lkenshalo, please do not take offense. That comment is in no way directed at you.