You can do that in the compositor. Google “Andrew Price compositor tutorial” and you will be rewarded with a link to a"stop light" tutorial that will answer most of your questions and get you on the right track.
i could help with this, first build the model which you want to have glowing lights, add a new material for the parts you want glowing. set the emit value fairly high. then go into node editor select “view compositing nodes” and tick the “use nodes” box, then break the link between render layers and final image click “add” “filter” “glare” then set the type and values in the box before creating a link from output of render layer to input of glare and a link from output of glare to input of composite. pm me for more details. are you working on some type of starship there, i can give you what little advice i have as i do similar stuff.
This is definitely a compositing process, just like in the “Stop Lights” tutorial. And it’s very informative to see how such a tutorial sets up the total effect, one piece at a time. In a very different world, Ansel Adams famously quoted that a photo was captured in the camera but made in the darkroom. In this case, “in the compositor.” Compositing, and the art of thinking in the way that compositing calls for, is where you really start to unlock the power of computer graphics and to take control of your pipeline.