[Radiance-general] Radiance-general Digest, Vol 83, Issue 23

[Thomas Bleicher]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Tim Metcalfe <tmetcalfe at kalwall.com> wrote:
> I have the ies file for an electric lightsource how do I put
> it into ecotect to use it or convert it to rad file?

I'm not a big user of Ecotect so my preferred workflow is this:

1) in Ecotect place and direct light objects where you want the IES
fitting to be. Use the same type of light for one type of fitting.

2) When you export to Radiance you get the option to export lights as
markers. This creates triangles with the correct rotation which you
can use with "replmarks".

2b) I think the lights are always exported last so you can edit your
exported scene.rad file and split it into a geometry.rad and
markers.rad. Makes it easier to update the geometry when the fittings
stay in the same place.

3) convert the IES file to a Radiance file with ies2rad:

$ ies2rad -t WHITE -m 0.7 myfitting.ies

This will create a myfitting.rad and myfitting.dat file which describe
a light source with 70% output of the values in the IES file. The -m
option is the best way to apply depreciation factors.

4) now use replmarks to replace the triangles in the "markers.rad"
file with the light source description:

$ replmarks -x myfitting.rad Light.123.4 markers.rad > lights.rad

"Light.123.4" is the modifier that was assigned to the triangles by
Ecotect. This should have some resemblance to the light type you used
when you placed the lights.

5) do the usual Radiance stuff with the new scene files:

oconv geometry.rad lights.rad > scene.oct
rvu scene.oct # to check that there are lights in the scene
[rpict/rtrace as desired]


The benefit of this method is that you can control each step and
modify the output or type of the light fittings. If you define and
export the lights in Ecotect you have to replace the whole scene
whenever you make a change to the fitting.

Regards,
Thomas