[Radiance-general] Applying materials & non-orthagonal surfaces

[dela]

I recently posted a question regarding perforated 
metal.  The material worked great, but I had to do a 
lot of tedious manual labor getting it to work right 
on a 3D arch due to the changes in surface normal of 
each section of the arch.

So, I've been wondering if there is a better way to 
handle adding orientation specific materials to mesh 
geometry.  (practically all the "advanced" materials 
in radiance seem to be orientation specific)  So, is 
there a tool that will facilitate this process?  
Seems like it would need to read a rad file, 
calculate the surface normals for the polygons, and 
then write out a corresponding material file & 
possibly new rad file to go with the material file.  
My guess is that's how it would need to work.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!  Mark