[Radiance-general] Re: rtrace

[Thomas Bleicher]

> If I set -x to 0, and -y to 1, does that mean the program will not exit
> until it finishes all calculations for all points?

Just try it: use a small octree and a file with point and direction input and do

rtrace -w -ab 1 -x 0 -y 1 scene.oct < input.pts
rtrace -w -ab 1 -x 0 -y 1 scene.oct < input.pts
rtrace -w -ab 1 -x 5 -y 1 scene.oct < input.pts

The first line is the default for rtrace (-x an -y 0).

> If I set -x to 5 and -y to 1, does that mean the program will exit after the
> calculation for five points (only one line) is finished? In this case, I
> have to run this program again to continue the calculation for the left
> points?

Yes but you have to remove the first 5 input lines from your points
file or rtrace will calculate the first 5 points again.

> Generally, if I set -x to 0 and want the program finishes all calculation at
> one time, do I need to set -y?

You don't have to set -x or -y to 0. The default for rtrace is to
calculate all the lines in the input file. But if you have a file with
1000 points you will not see the results before the last of these
points has been calculated. Therefore you may want to split your input
in smaller files of say 100 lines each or set "-x" to 100. Then rtrace
will write out the results for every group of 100 lines. Don't set
"-x" too low, however, or you will notice a slow down of the
calculation.

Thomas