[Radiance-general] IES file viewer

[Greg Ward]

Yes, well I was thinking much more along the lines of what Rob has  
already done, that is provide a means to graphically confirm a  
luminaire's output distribution in a Radiance context.  I.e., it  
should take ies2rad output, not reinterpret the IES file, as Zack and  
others have noted that ies2rad itself is occasionally suspect.  Also,  
having the Radiance coordinates as a final check of placement in the  
scene is often useful.

I don't use IES files that often myself, which is probably why I have  
never spent much time on this.  I just thought a false color fisheye  
image might be an interesting way to confirm the IES file was being  
loaded and interpreted and placed correctly.  Sounds like there are  
enough tools out there already, though.

-Greg

> From: "Lars O. Grobe" <akilog at nus.edu.sg>
> Date: January 21, 2009 5:52:21 PM PST
>
> Hi Greg!
>>
>> What are the system requirements for your interactive viewer?   
>> Would people like to have something that generates falsecolor  
>> plots?  I don't think it would be terribly difficult to create a  
>> script for that.
> I have been looking in that, too. I think a great solution would be  
> a tool that converts IES into
>
> a) .rad: "wireframe" geometry, a bit like what genworm does,  
> normalizing the dimensions so that one scale it according to  
> luminous output and place it in a scene to explain light sources'  
> qualities.
>
> b) .meta: polar line plots like the common diagrams we get, which  
> is what we are used to look at. This would
> provide an easy way to compare the data we get in our IES with the  
> data the manufacturer published in print.
>
> I think both is doeable even using nothing but shell scripts,  
> genworm and the various plotting utilities coming with radiance.  
> The problem I was facing was the IES format, with all its  
> variations. To create a parser that really handles all IES  
> luminaire distribution formats seems to be not that easy,  
> especially if you want to extract metadata, too (which would be  
> nice to have included in the plot in case b) and as comment lines  
> in the scene in case a).
>
> Maybe these two could also be just options for ies2rad...
>
> CU Lars.