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Detailed Product Specification
What is Rayfront?
Rayfront is a platform independent graphical
user interface to the lighting simulation software
Radiance.
It can be run as an Autocad extension, together with the
3Dsolar building modeller,
or as a standalone program.
Rayfront works with the following hard- and
software:
You can also use Rayfront together with many other CAD
and modelling programs, as it reads all DXF files, and
translators for a large number of other data formats are included.
Just select the free or commercial geometry modeler of
your preference, and there will be a way to use it's output
data with Rayfront.
Why Buy Rayfront?
There are many reasons why you might consider our software.
Let's just look at a few:
-
Realism: Have you ever wondered why most other
visualization software produces so synthetic looking images?
-
Prediction: Did you ever want to reliably know how your
architectural design looks at night? In full sunshine? At dawn?
-
Verification: Would you have liked to substantiate this
knowledge with hard figures?
-
Scalability: Did you ever simulate a huge project with
radiosity based software, and ran up against its scene
size limits?
-
Useability: Have you ever tryed to work with Radiance,
and given up after some time, frustrated over it's complexity?
With Rayfront, those problems are all gone!
Features
We really don't like the habit of
counting features very much. There is enough
software around that suffers from "featuritis",
and still doesn't reliably do what the users want.
But we probably still should make some
statements about what our software can actually do
for you. Here comes a short description of what
to expect:
- If it's a valid Radiance project, then
Rayfront should be able to handle it. We may have to
modify the structure of your data a little bit,
but most of it should come along fine.
- GUI based access to (almost) all parameters
of a radiance simulation. A GUI is always an
abstraction of the endless possibilities of the
unix command line. But we did our best to
preserve as much of the power as we can.
- Edit and define materials, patterns, textures
and mixtures in all valid combinations within
the GUI. Of course this includes the easy use of
function and data files, and unlimited nesting
of modifiers.
- Distribute simulations across the network.
Any machine where Radiance and a few additional
tools can be compiled, serves as a background processor.
Right now, only the binaries for the supported
platforms are included on the CD-ROM, but if you
want to run Rayservers on other systems,
we can provide you with the
information to make it possible there as well.
- You can control the distribution of jobs across
the local network from a single workstation.
- Rayfront will run as a standlone application, as
an add-on to Autocad or Intellicad, or together
with the 3Dsolar
building modeller.
Import geometry data directly
from any CAD system through our DXF interface.
- Import luminaire data from IESNA, CIBSE or
Eulumdat format files.
There should be data available for virtually
every luminaire in this world in one of those formats.
- Render images, compute daylight factors, workplane
illuminance, and evaluate glare distribution.
- Postprocess rendered images interactively, and
convert them into a wide range of formats.
- Check the user manual
for more details.
How is it done?
Rayfront combines the power of the most elaborate
lighting simulation and rendering engine existing
with the experience gathered in the development
of several interfaces and front ends for it,
starting almost a decade ago.
This software know-how is leveraged with several years
of practical application for lighting design in
one of the largest consulting engineering offices
in Germany.
The development of our software benefits from the expertise
of many well respected experts working in educational
institutions and in the industry all around the world,
which helped to test and improve Rayfront.
What is it Not?
Rayfront is NOT a toy!
You will need substantial hardware to run this program
and work on any nontrivial project.
The underlying Radiance system is an extremely
powerful software package, and running lighting
simulations will make use of more computing power in of
your high-end machine than you ever knew was
sleeping in there!
Where can I get it?
You can buy Rayfront right here
or get the free demo.
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