[Radiance-general] objline doesn't seem to work properly and X11 window flash and gone very quickly

[Rob Guglielmetti]

Hmmm, that's odd. The error means that the program could not open the file vchars.mta in a read-only capacity. Following a normal installation of Radiance on Mac OS X, that file should indeed live in /usr/local/lib/ray/meta and be read-only accessible to everyone. 

So yeah it's possible that something didn't go right during installation. The correct and not-totally-detailed procedures for installing Radiance on the Mac are:

go to www.radiance-online.org, click the link on the left for "download radiance", and follow the procedures found under "Download official release from this server". Basically you grab the source code, and compile. Compiling on the Mac is easy, you run ./makeall install from the directory where you unpack the archive, and follow the prompts. You need to run this as an admin, and in Mac OS this is easy:

sudo ./makeall install

This will prompt you for the administrator password, and then you just follow the prompts. 

NOTE: you must have the directory /usr/local/lib/ray already existing so the installer can place all the library files. This is done with 

sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/ray

Maybe this was your problem the first time around? Here's a quick rundown of the steps:

1. download http://www.radiance-online.org/software/rad3R9all.tar.gz 
2. at the command prompt, go to the directory where you saved the rad3R9all.tar.gz file
3. type: gunzip < rad3R9all.tar.gz | tar xf -
4. go to the archive directory (cd ray)
5. create /usr/local/lib/ray directory if it does not exist (sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/ray)
6. type sudo ./makeall install (supply admin password when asked)
7. follow the prompts, responding to defaults; definitely answer 'y' when asked if you want to install libraries, accept default location
8. make the PATH changes recommended after installation. 

Give that a go, and retry objline.

- Rob

On Jun 11, 2010, at 10:37 AM, Ji Zhang 张冀 wrote:

> Thanks, John!
> 
> But I think the rad file I used should be OK because it only contains five simple boxes and I can use rvu to generate a rendering for it. 
> 
> Just now I tried to use the table.rad file got from Axel Jacobs' tutorial and the objline still doesn't work. Moreover, there's an error message showing in the Terminal: 
> 
> fatal - cannot open file "/usr/local/lib/ray/meta/vchars.mta", mode "r"
> 
> I sense my Radiance has got big problem. What does this error message mean? 
> 
> Should I reinstall Radiance?
> 
> What are the correct and detailed procedures to install Radiance on Mac OS X Snow Leopard? 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ji
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:35 PM, John Mardaljevic <jm at dmu.ac.uk> wrote:
> Ji,
> 
> Objline might bomb out if there are non-planar vertices in your model.
> 
> -John
> 
> -----------------------------------------------
> Dr. John Mardaljevic
> Reader in Daylight Modelling
> Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development
> De Montfort University
> The Gateway
> Leicester
> LE1 9BH, UK
> +44 (0) 116 257 7972
> +44 (0) 116 257 7981 (fax)
> 
> jm at dmu.ac.uk
> http://www.iesd.dmu.ac.uk/~jm
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> ZHANG Ji 张冀 (PhD) :: Research Fellow :: Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities :: School of Design and Environment :: National University of Singapore :: 4 Architecture Drive,  Singapore, 117566 :: Contact: 65-6516 5046 :: Email: sdezj at nus.edu.sg
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