u/EvNastyy

I wanted to share my method for wiring up a building. It can get pretty crazy trying to rewire things or add expansions if you don't have a system in place.

Keeping your workstations/deployables on one circuit and your lighting on another helps keep things organized.

All power enters the building near the main door that I use the most. From this point, run one line on the floor against the wall, all the way around. This is your workstation/deployable circuit.

To take power up or down to the next floor, run a cord straight up or down from where all of your power enters the base and follow the same layout. For the easiest expansion or adding of new workstations in the future, place a cord attachment point at the border between every wall piece. Even if you don't have anything to power at the moment in that spot, you will have a bunch of readymade points to attach new stations to, instead of having to reconnect more or larger sections to complete the circuit when something changes.

Now for your lighting circuit. Run another line from where it enters the base over to the nearest corner, outside. Run that line up to nearly ceiling-level, and run the cord all the way around the building, making sure that you are placing the cords along the ceiling/at the top of the wall but still on this level.

If each circuit is separate but has the same origin, you get two distinct "trees" of power and that instantly makes it easier to keep everything mentally organized. Having the same origin means you can cut all power with the removal of one wire. If you always run power up to the next floor at the same spot for each circuit, you can easily isolate each floor for adjustments without breaking the circuit on other floors.

If you make sure to keep all of your cords hugging the wall or the ceiling, depending on which circuit we are talking about, then you can hide all of your wiring by placing beams of your choosing as trim/baseboards/molding.

Added bonus: if you use glass structures or even just lots of windows, you do not need to power the lights during the day, and this dual-circuit setup makes it easy to create your own light switch.

On the level that would be most convenient for you, on the wall right next to the corner where your lighting circuit travels up and down between floors, create a small loop of several cord attachment points. I settled on a hexagon shape as my favorite.

When it is daytime, I remove one of the segments of that loop, and the power for only the lights is cut. Reattach at night, and your lights are back on!