Lighting Tools - IES and refraction

Hi,

Just getting started with Rhino, I have been going through the forums looking for some advice on how approach lighting design in Rhino.

Refraction / Reflection
I came across this old plugin for refractive calculations. I was wondering if there is any hope that is still alive and that I could make it work in Rhino for Mac? Or perhaps the maths are straightforwards enough that it would be easiest to recreate using curves and surfaces in Python?

IES Profiles
I am looking for ways to plot an IES profile from an object. I am not interested in rendered visualizations, an overlay of curves would give me a good understanding on how the light source is spreading through space and allow me to position and modify objects.
Are there any tools of the sort for Rhino / Grasshopper?

It would be great to have some pointers, I am sure that some of you do similar work and found solutions.
Thank you for your help

Here is one that we use a lot. It’s called IESviewer, by the makers of AGI32
http://photometricviewer.com/

Thank you for your reply.
I am looking for something that would help me visualize light distribution inside Rhino.
I have looked into plotting the IES web in rhino, but I cant say I understand the data conventions and couldnt find any explanations either. Perhaps you can help?

On the render side I have also been trying LuxCore render. Is there any way to export native files from Rhino to luxcore standalone without going through Blender?

The IES file format is reasonably straight-forward, but not well documented. You can purchase a PDF of the standard ANSI/IES LM-63-19 from IES (https://www.ies.org/product/approved-method-ies-standard-file-format-for-the-electronic-transfer-of-photometric-data-and-related-information/). This is very comprehensive document, which I would suggest you get.

There are not many free resources. I only found a couple of pages by AGI32 (https://docs.agi32.com/AGi32/Content/references/IDH_iesna_standard_file_format.htm) and by AutoDesk (https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-EA0E3DE0-275C-42F7-83EC-429A37B2D501-htm.html)

Photometry is all about the angles, namely C-Planes (from C0, which is +x through C90 which is -y etc) C0 and C360 are the same. Within a C-Plane, you have the gamma-angles (from 0 which is -z or the nadir to 180 which is +z or the zenith). The page explains this in more detail: http://www.ransen.com/photometric/understanding-photometric-polar-diagrams.htm

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Hi Carlos,

Unfortunately I don’t have the time right now to update that plug-in and make it cross-platform.
Jess

Hi @Jess and thank you for your reply. I wouldnt expect you to do it.
I can try to move to a windows machine and reverse engineer some of the behaviour. Would you happen to know if it is still running in r6?