[Radiance-general] Radiance Project Organization

[Thomas Bleicher]

Hello everyone.

I'm currently developing a new interface for Radiance for the
free 3D modeling suite Blender. Screenshots and a very early
version can be found at

    http://home.arcor.de/tbleicher/exif/index.html

Please note that you should know something about Blender, Python
and Linux if you want to install the current version.

Among other things it supports IES data import and the import
of Radiance material descriptions (very limited at the moment).
Both are organized in some sort of "library" backend. Now I'm
looking for a good idea how to organize and populate these libraries.
I think I'll find the most experienced users here on this list so I'm
asking the community at large: 

about luminaire data:

*) Which features would you like to see in a data browser?

*) Is there a common standard for information exchange beyond
   IES, TM14 and Eulumdat(*.ldt)? Particularly I'm looking for
   some sort of database for luminaire, lamptype and geometry
   data or images. It seems like every manufacturer has it's
   own standard and presentation utility.
   I know there is a project call "DIALUX" which seems to be
   supported by a lot of manufacturers (at least in Europe) but
   I don't know if it's actually very popular.

*) How do you organize luminaire data in your projects?
   Do you pre-select the files to use in the project and only
   handle a small quantitiy of datafiles or do you use
   (centralized) repositories (by type, by manufacturer)?
   
about materials:

*) Do you use simple material descriptions or is there no
   end in complexity (modifiers, *.cal files etc.)?

*) Do you rely on CAD exporters (and how they handle the material
   assignment) or do you hand edit materials?

*) Where do your material definitions come from? Messurements,
   handed down for generations and guarded carefully in the family
   vault, fiddling until it "looks right"?

*) Do you use image based textures?


I hope some of you can share their experiences and information
on these things. If you have other ideas or a wishlist for a 
Radiance interface I'd be glad to hear about it. I try to keep
the parts of my code as separate as possible so libraries etc.
may be useable without the Blender iterface as well.


Thanks for your interest,

Thomas

PS: I am well aware of "b/rad" by Francesco Anselmo. So far we
    had different targets in developing our interfaces but in
    the near future we hope to join our efforts. No one likes
    to be second in inventing the wheel ;)