Rayfront-Announce Newsletter Archive

Issue Nr. 3
Aug. 31st 2000.

Contents:

• Rayfront Shipment Deadline Approaching
• AutoCAD Integration Finished and Working
• Tech-Babble: DXF to Radiance Geometry Translation
• Further Plans and Short News
• Other Newsletter Issues

Rayfront Shipment Deadline Approaching

This is the news item many of you have been waiting for! I have decided that development for Rayfront version 1.0 will be finished September 30th 2000. After this deadline, there will be some production activities to handle (pressing CDs, printing boxes, preparing the web site for e-commerce, etc.) which may push the actual shipment date to mid October.

This decision has a number of consequences on my current work. First, I have made an internal list of features that *must* be in the final version (dropping some minor "nice to have" items). The immediate focus will be on implementing the features from this list, so that the beta testers can have a look at them before the deadline. The remaining time will be filled with fixing the last bugs, and writing up those parts of the documentation that are still missing.

Since all Radiance license issues are now resolved, I'll be able to get a copy of the source code of Radiance for Windows, so that I can check those implementation details that differ from the unix version. This is important, because Rayfront has to know about any differences, and do the right thing on each platform. So far, Radiance for Windows appears to work quite nicely, and it should be possible to fix the remaining small difficulties before they become problems.

Autocad Integration Finished and Working

Beta testers have been delighted to find that they now can run Rayfront from within Autocad without restrictions. After some initial confusion, it is now possible to work with the program in exactly the same way as with the standalone version. On top of that, doing so allows to retreive geometry data directly from the current drawing, which will then be stored within the Rayfront project in a one step operation. The same is the case for view definitions and for measuring fields, which can be created as special blocks within a drawing.

As you may see from this short description, this is a very different approach from the way Desktop Radiance or commercial alternatives like Siview operate. While their priority is geared towards ease of use and unobstrusive integration into the Autocad user interface, Rayfront will not give up it's "identity" as a seperate program. Apart from the data transfer mechanisms outlined above, the work with Rayfront will be absolutely identical, whether you run it within or without Autocad. Our primary goal was flexibility before simplicity, which may make some operations a little harder for the inexperienced user. But if you already know Radiance, you'll be able to access most of it's power without restrictions.

Note that neither approach is "right" or "wrong". We expect that many users will be very happy working with Desktop Radiance, as they can just continue the way the were used to work with Autocad before, creating correct lighting simulations along the way without having to learn how to handle a seperate program. The purpose of the comparison we are presenting here is only to highlight the differences, which will hopefully make your choice easier, whichever alternative you prefer. After all, it would have made little sense to develop both packages, if they worked exactly the same way in the end!

Tech-Babble: DXF to Radiance Geometry Translation

We recently ran into a lighting designer who was interested in beta testing Rayfront, but used a completely different CAD software than Autocad. What to do? From its design, Rayfront doesn't really require Autocad, but in practise there were many obstacles to overcome when someone wanted to use geometry data created by another program with Radiance. Introducing myself as a software developer, I had to find a simple solution: Write a program that does the translation!

After checking the available code, the solution turned indeed out to be fairly simple. Take the transformation routines from Radout, mix them together with a decent DXF file parser, and voila: dxf2rad was born!

Download dxf2rad

The program understands all valid DXF files, and will convert all geometry information it finds in a very similar way as Radout does from within Autocad (with the exception of ACIS solids, which would require expensive third party software libraries).

Using dxf2rad is fairly simple:

$> dxf2rad [options] dxffile [radfile]
 
Where options may include:
    -h        help (show this text and exit)
    -H        display copyright and license and exit
    -v        verbose (repetition increases verbosity)
    -s scale  multiply all dimensions with scale
    -d dtol   distance tolerance for arc subdivision (default 0.1)
    -a atol   angle tolerance for arc subdivision (default 15.0°)
    -ennn     exclude entity types
    +ennn     include entity types
              Where each 'n' is one out of (with defaults):
              a  + 3D FACEs
              b  + Extruded and Flat 2D SOLIDs
              c  + Extruded and Flat TRACEs
              d  + Extruded 2D PLINEs
              e  + Wide 2D PLINEs
              f  - Closed 2D PLINEs as Polygons
              g  + 3D MESHes
              h  + POLYFACEs
              i  + Extruded LINEs
              j  + Extruded ARCs
              k  + Extruded and Flat CIRCLEs
              l  - POINTs as Spheres

If radfile is omitted or is the single character '-', then the output will go to stdout (in which case verbosity is reset to 0).

Of course, you don't really need to remember all those options, as Rayfront will offer to import DXF files transparently. You will be presented with a dialog to configure all settings, then the program will call dxf2rad in the background and read the radiance data output. After this, another dialog will list all the "objects" (layers) found in the file, and you can select which ones you want to be added to the project, and included in the current variation.

Further Plans and Short News

Daylight Redirection Delayed
The author of the Radiance extension Mktis for simulating daylight redirection systems has broken his shoulder about a month ago. This kept him from programming as he had planned, so that the Rayfront plug-in module integrating his tool will not be ready for the initial release date. This is not really a problem for Rayfront, as the two products are fairly independent of each other. Of course I still hope that he will regain his strength as soon as possible, so that we can then announce the next product release together.

Licht 2000 Conference
I will attend to the Licht 2000 conference September 20-22th in Goslar, which is a big meeting organized in collaboration by the german, swiss, austrian and dutch lighting associations. Other than at the Otti Symposion in January, I won't hold a presentation there myself, as my current development work has not allowed to prepare anything in time. However, several of the Rayfront beta testers will talk about simulation issues, so that there are chances that it may at least get a "honorable mention". Anyone who is there as well should not hesitate to grab me for any questions or other conversation!

Thanks!
As time goes by, the tension to get Rayfront out of the door becomes stronger every day. Again, a very big "Thank You" to all those beta testers who pointed me to problems and supplied suggestions for improving Rayfront, and still do! The fourth issue of the Rayfront-Announce newsletter will probably appear in about a month, when more details about the final release are available. I appologize for making you wait three months instead of the usual two for this current issue.

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