How do I…

Wire LED tape

Draw wires from a driver to a controller and from a controller to the feeds of LED tape, chained or in parallel; each shows its length and the gauge it needs.

Where to find it: Palette › Equipment › Lighting › Wire

LED wires are drawn the way conduits are, between a Driver, a Controller and the feeds of LED tape, the rings where power comes into the tape. Each wire is numbered W-1, W-2 and so on, and its label carries its cable: W-2 · 18/3. Its length is in Properties.

1. Click Wire. The bar says LED wire, beside Chain or Parallel and the gauge for the wires you draw.
2. Click where the wire starts: a driver, a controller, or a tape's feed (over a tape the tool lands on its nearest feed), then click where it ends. A wire from or to a feed finds its own path: off the tape square to it, then one corner into the other end. It keeps that path as the tape moves or changes. Shorten the tape past a feed and its wire lets go. To place bends yourself, click them before the end: each brings the corner at the bar's angle, 90° until you choose another; hold Shift for a straight stretch in 15° steps. Drag a bend or an end later to move it anywhere; with Shift a bend keeps both its sides to 15° steps, on a ring at each end. A wire keeps the bends you placed; Auto path, in its ⋯ in Properties, gives it its own path again.
3. With Chain the next wire starts where this one ended, from the controller to the first tape and on. With Parallel each wire starts where the first one started, a home run from the controller to each feed.
4. Press Esc or Done to finish.

Every run has a feed at each end. The first wire to a run decides which end its other feeds are counted from; Fed from in its Properties changes it. A feed between two sections takes a wire for each, one per piece of tape.

LED wires belong to Lighting, not Conduit: hiding Lighting hides them with the tape, hiding Conduit leaves them.

Auto gauge gives each wire the thinnest gauge within the drop its tape allows. A wire from a controller toward the tape is a control wire: it has the tape's own wires, 3 for Lumaris Tunable White and 6 for RGB + Tunable White, and is sized for everything its controller powers, as Lutron's wire tables are. A wire from the driver is a power wire, 2 wires. Generic tape allows a 3% drop on each wire; Lumaris the drop Lutron's tables allow.

A wire's length is the line you draw plus any extra. Give a driver, a controller or the tape an Extra per wire in Properties, for the footage between your line and it — 6 ft down a wall to a power supply, 1 ft up to a shelf — and every wire that lands on it grows by that much. A wire's own Extra covers the one that is different. Adds up shows how its length is made; its gauge, drop and what to buy follow the whole length.

Select a wire to see its Gauge, its Cable, its length, what it Carries and its Drop against what its tape allows, and to choose another gauge. Select a driver or a controller to see its Load against its Watts; past 80% of a driver for Generic tape, or past its watts for Lumaris, it says so.

The LED list in the Cabling tab lists every run, wire and load, and what to buy: tape in reels, drivers and each cable.

See draw a conduit.