Lightsolve UEM 2015 User Manual
Contents
1. id the current location When reloading the same data is automatically restored in Lightsolve 17 Summary of commands raise look around walk create sensors 4 6 F F slide left Y slide right J Y lower Known issues creating any be executed twice and the application freezes loaded Please use materials instead for a given geometry 182. Based and Absolute metrics when the module allows both scales Ww um X Tluminance 0 e Ww o Muminance 0 Q 9pm 9pm 3pm 3pm noon noon 9am 9am 6am Gam 3am 3am c 2 bk cx unt o D b ng m 42 v 323233223838 8332352232884 Absolute Scale Temporal Map Goal Based Scale Temporal Map The performance yearly results are visible as temporal maps and as an overlay in the 3D scene to appreciate the spatial distribution of performance scores In addition the instant performance index can also be displayed as an overlay to evaluate in detail the critical moments low performance READING TEMPORAL MAPS COLOR SCALE 10096 100 Colors represent the of a sensor TOO LOW TOO HIGH A plane s area which meets your illuminance goals They take into account dominant weather 100 MEETS GOALS CORRELATION TO TIME The vertical axis corresponds to hours of the day and the horizontal axis to days of the year Red Too much light on summer afternoons Yellow Good light year round in the mornings Blue Too little light year round near sunrise AM gt NOON gt PM 15 The absolute scale is a goal independent scale adjusted to display all the performance values over the year The Matlab pink scale was chosen because of researchers familiarity with it and because of its excellent contrast Geneva 46 25 N 6 13 E 30 May 14 10 PiafIRSil aL uminanceo x All sensors at a glan
3. Getting started with Lightsolve UEM 2015 LIPID ENAC Prof M Andersen A BAR a AD M KOV ava Author Lorenzo Cantelli LIPID LAB EPFL Contents laigss ed Mee ma T YT 4 Maikalu EIER m 5 Installing VST ES ONY RR 5 lee 5 uis9 P m c 5 Upgrading Restoring Lightsolve ssssseseee e nennen nennen nennen nsns nnne nnn n nensis renes 6 Getting the best out OF VOULSCIBBE oper Ie Fen Dn pae n t navail ad uox ba PES eer Tune lk UE nekk kk EIE 6 Lientselve WOK O W AAI a OI o SIN I E UIN S PNE NEM CMSU DU ET PN UH UNI UR SU RISE 7 Supported 3D modeling 6019 RN NT D TT m 7 SUpported TIETO I MMM E OT 8 Preparing a 3D model for LightsolVe u erro tareas iore oo ra Vna Ea aan siia ea dann as inndi kesta id ep REL ed Si a 8 Launching the applicatlalis sas sis eseuiuvisesiGero draama eki SEu EVEN GU UR Qa a RENI aadel at deb POU E nf 9 Navigating the SCO BIETET OTT 10 Creatine the SOS ONS PE uu vct aac gry RUE dist MU IN IRUEN a n 11 Starting Daylighting Simulation erseerernneeenennneenennnneenennneen n nnne nn nnne esent nnns 12 SOUT I UU ROMA S GUILD geese vara sci vce nis VEU A IET NM DUNEDIN t 14 LU 14 M lema AAA AO d wacac E E 14 Understanding LiphtsolVe sees si pare AAA AUS cbeavasiaseeabtanode
4. an application that helps configuring the screen settings correctly in terms of contrast brightness and gamma The application is named DCCW and it can be started through the Lightsolve Update window GL Display Color Calibration PN Lightsolve workflow Supported 3D modeling tools Before the workflow starts the user needs to either load an existing Lightsolve project or start from a new file It is clearly impossible to support the file formats of all modeling 3D tools as any software producer creates its own proprietary file format Despite that it would not be acceptable if the conversion was painful For this reason we put a great effort in testing and making Lightsolve compatible with the output of several modeling tools Other tools would probably also work in the worst case by tuning 1 or 2 export parameters Here is a list of the ones that were tested 3D Studio Max Export your file as Wavefront OBJ file Try the Collada DAE file format in case of problems or use another tools like Blender to double check your file Artlantis Studio Export your file to SketchUp skp format The file is not always complete and valid this is due to Artlantis and we could not fix it Consider using other tools Supported file formats The following file format compatibility chart shows the accepted input formats and their limitations Working Comment status Some basic examples are included with th
5. ce lightsoive EE ESI EIA B 0 o mo e ss Point of view sensor detailed view 16 Sensor action menu Right clicking on a sensor will select it and display the action menu The following action can be performed Translate rotate and scale the sensor Save sensor data Clone Sensor clone and select current sensor The clone will be exactly at the same location as the original moving it immediately is a good habit to take Refresh Simulation Performance refresh data for this single sensor This is very useful in scenes with many sensors Delete the sensor Progress Bars For each user action the progress bar indicates the progress of the processing task In some cases like while loading one part of the work is done by your CPU and RAM while another part is accomplished by your GPU and VRAM This means that the time needed for the overall task is hard to forecast as each machine has a different balance between CPU and GPU computational power For this reason in some cases several progress bars are displayed sequentially for the same action Lightsolve Project file format After importing a 3D model into Lightsolve the user can save the current scene to a Lightsolve project by clicking the save project button When saving the current scene to a project the following data is stored in the project file the 3D geometry the scene materials without texture images the sensors
6. cted by clicking it in the 3D scene make sure sensors are being displayed Once selected the sensor can be modified as explained above or deleted by clicking the delete sensor button in the left toolbar Once done with the sensor creation and finished the background processing you are ready to start the lighting simulation for the existing sensors 11 Tips You can identify a sensor by right clicking it its name is the title of the popup menu A sensor s type cannot be changed after creation Sensors can be cloned by right clicking the one to clone in the scene and selecting clone sensor in the scroll list Starting Daylighting Simulation This is the step where the computing power of the computer will make a difference Depending on the model s complexity the time resolution and on the number of sensors processing can take quite a long time Illuminance values are being computed for the whole year and for each sensor The processing is started by clicking on the start simulation button in the left toolbar If one single sensor is modified after computing the simulation data it can be refreshed by right clicking on the sensor in the 3D scene and selecting refresh simulation in the scroll list Tips Atthis point the Radiance files for each moment have been prepared if using Radiance It is possible to render the current view with Radiance by simply clicking the Screenshot button in the left bar One rendering could
7. dsiuniet 15 Goal Based and Absolute Scales nn 666vvovenenununnnnnannnneeeenennn nen nnne ess nnn nnne nennen enses 15 BOTS Ol CULO i a Ne 17 PTOA BOE MM Mei dua dme EM M IN A E E UE UEM NORIS 17 Liehitsolve Project Tile FORMAAT nona kokana EEE Od Leu k e aan ed vxo Nen Alija kai 17 Summary of command S sssrin aaa a SEEK NN coU d ds 18 MAAMUNA 18 Introduction Lightsolve is a software application from the LIPID laboratory EPFL It is a standalone application that can be used with models designed with several CAD applications An additional effort was put in the compatibility with Google SketchUp and Rhinoceros file formats The natural file format for Lightsolve is Wavefront OBJ most CAD application allow importing and exporting to this format without additional plugins Lightsolve is a daylighting performance assessment application for design phase building models It is based both on Radiance http www radiance online org and an internal GPU accelerated graphic engine taking advantage of NVidia Optix technology used to simplify the definition of surface of interests and points of view crucial for daylighting assessment around the scene Each performance module is the result of the studies of the Lab s researchers and takes into account the building s efficiency from a different point of view At t
8. e application When loading a file Lightsolve will assume that the model s unit is meters and will load the file as is with no unit conversion Preparing a 3D model for Lightsolve It is possible to design the building with any 3D modeling software In order to get a 3D model that is displayed correctly in Lightsolve the following guidelines need to be followed 1 Solids have a thickness Lightsolve works with solids Avoid infinitely thin surfaces 2 The coordinates system is X towards East Y towards North it is recommended to set the building s orientation in the modeling tool see the Known issues paragraph 2 The windows should be designed as a multiple layers of glass keep this into consideration when setting the transparency opacity a One layer for single glazing window b Two layers for double glazing window and so on 3 The building has to be designed on a surface representing the ground around it The dimension of this surface should be of about 3 times the building area as projected on the ground 4 You can add dummies for surfaces of interest creation directly in your design tool by adding 100 transparent surfaces to your design Launching the application The installer has added a shortcut to Lightsolve to your Desktop Double click it and follow the instructions to start the application Tae a Lo i 24 E 2 MIT P I ARS IY Tips Lightsolve Raytracing Engine works at a constant
9. he current stage Lightsolve has a good level of usability and compatibility with several input formats The simulation can be done with the embedded engine or Radiance the first giving less precise results but way faster Lightsolve comes with predefined settings for Radiance for immediate use but it can be configured to work otherwise All data intermediary and final produced during the simulation can be exported to a common format images videos or csv files The scripts to run the lighting simulation outside Lightsolve can also be generated This Quick Start Guide is not meant to be an exhaustive User Manual We made Lightsolve as intuitive as possible and we hope that users have a spontaneously comfortable experience Please check our online videos http youtu be D1c2uxU T3k http youtu be Rzf9jPHOFUO Reguirements e Windows 64 bit OS 8 1 8 7 Vista or XP e An NVidia graphic card GTX series with at least 1GB video RAM o GTX 560 or higher tested on GTX 560 GTX570 o GTX660 or higher tested on GTX 660 GTX 660 Ti GTX 680 GTX 675M o GTX 750 Ti or higher tested on GTX 750Ti GTX 760 GTX 780 GTX 765M o GTX 860M or higher not tested o GTX970 or higher tested on GTX 980 Also the graphic card must provide CUDA Compute Capability 2 0 or higher You can check the C C of your graphic setup here https developer nvidia com cuda gpus e 8GB RAM minimum recommended 16GB e aQuad Core CPU Core i5 minimum i7 w
10. ith hyper threading recommended e about 2GB of free space on an Hard Drive Installing Lightsolve Windows 1 Download the installer from this link official Lightsolve webpage 2 Run the installer and follow the instructions The application can be uninstalled from the Programs and Features window in the Control Panel MacOS X The MacOS X release is not ready to be released for several reasons the application would need to be tested and debugged separately as most issues are linked to the environment the Lightsolve Team cannot afford to split the testing efforts into two versions Apple did not equip their last generation of computers 2014 2015 with high end NVidia graphic cards Upgrading Restoring Lightsolve In order to check for updates or refresh your Lightsolve installation start Lightsolve Update from the Lightsolve folder in the start menu A Lightsolve Launcher V1 0 Lightsolve requires an high end card of the last generation of NVidia graphic hardaware to run smoothly Local GPU Version It your computer does not have compatible hardware or it the application is slow it is still possible to try Lightsolve in its client server version Client Server Version Check if a new version is available or restore the current install Update Open Windows Display Calibration Center and follow the steps to get the best out of your display Open DCCW Getting the best out of your screen Windows includes
11. resolution the traced image is not refreshed nor recomputed when resizing or moving the main window If the rendering is too slow you can lower the raytracing resolution To do so go to the Advanced tab in the Lightsolve settings window accessible through the 3 icon in the top menu and change the resolution factor You can easily calculate the final resolution a factor of 1 0 corresponds to the Full HD resolution 1920 x 1080 while the HD Ready resolution is achieved using a factor of 0 65 1280 x 720 Navigating the scene The 3D modelis displayed in the main window and the user can start navigating the scene by using the following intuitive commands Rotate View Direction Hold Mouse Left Button Longer step Hold the Shift key Shorter step Hold the Control key After loading some mandatory workflow steps are explained by the overlay user guide in the 3D view While the scene is preprocessed it can be explored to check for possible import problems such as missing surfaces or normal facing problems If your model is tilted use this button to fix it In other words if the Y and Z axis were swapped it will flip your model by 90 Once done click next Follow these steps carefully before starting the light assessment and please be patient HDR raytracing is an extremely resource demanding task for a laptop or even a desktop computer Geneva Switzerland 46 25 N 6 13 E 17 December 08 00 Use this button
12. sented as huge matrixes are simply unreadable and performance images out of their spatial context are still very hard to interpreter Despite that we decided to make it possible to export the intermediary data and the final images to make Lightsolve comparable with other tools and to simplify report writing Visual The following images are written when saving a sensor s data luminance luminance grayscale images subfolders Surfacellluminance and PointOfView Instant performance images subfolders AbsolutePerformance and GoalBasedPerformance One yearly temporal map representing the performance over time One yearly performance image representing the yearly performance distribution in space A SensorWidget p el lai x Goal Based Scale v Save Sensors fr 5 Sensor s overview Numeric A csv files containing the simulation output values is also exported Check the Surfacellluminance and PointOfiew subfolders inside the folder where the sensor was saved the illuminance_values csv file contains the illuminance data values matrix i AbsoluteBasedPerformance File folder di GoalBasedPerformance File folder di PointOfView File folder n Radiance Files File folder n Surfacellluminance File folder Output folder content 14 Understanding Lightsolve Goal Based and Absolute Scales Each temporal map shows the corresponding sensor s name and has its own controls which allow switching between Goal
13. take some minutes depending on the model complexity Through the same button the user can render an image HDR or BMP or a time lapse video using OptiX or an image using Radiance HDR and BMP The current moment time and date used for rendering can be changed by clicking on the eye grid at the right of the Main view panel Each point of the grid corresponds to a moment being simulated The rendered sky type weather conditions can be selected in the upper toolbar by clicking on one sky Clear Clear Turbid Intermediate or Overcast The currently active sky icon is clearly visible while the others fade to transparent After processing the user will have to inputthe goals for each sensor depending on the sensor s type It may take a few minutes to process the performance for all sensors When done the corresponding Temporal Maps for each sensor are displayed If one single sensor is modified the performance can be refreshed by clicking on the sensor in the 3D scene and selecting refresh performance in the scroll list 12 Geneva 46 25 N 6 13 E 14 April 15 46 5373334 Temporal Maps Lightsolve Z E el lei 2 x oh o Kk Qo te Temporal Maps 13 Simulation s result Once all sensors performances are computed for each moment Lightsolve produces the final performance images one for each instant sky and one for yearly performance We believe that performances distributions repre
14. to locate your building on earth for better weather statistics accuracy The nearest location or the most similar in terms of weather and day OFS duration 10 Creating the sensors This paragraph describes how to create sensors inside Lightsolve this operation can be simplified in vour modeling tool by adding 100 transparent surfaces dummies to your scene Point of view based sensors can be created by clicking the add sensor button in the left toolbar surface based sensors by right clicking an existing surface or a 100 dummy created in your modeling tool Doing so shows a scroll list where to select the type of sensor to create Each performance module has its own sensor type 22 Geneva Switzerland 46 25 N 6 13 E 17 December 08 00 You can add and remove sensors from the scene using the and buttons Contrast Variability the active point of view is the performance input Glare Health Illuminance the surface is the sensor place it accurately Optimizing memory needs Adding and removing sensors After selecting its parent module the sensor appears When the performance module allows it the user can change the size orientation and position of its sensors by right clicking it and choosing the desired transform to apply move rotate or scale The TAB key is used to toggle the reference axis for the transform X Y or Z for translation and rotation X Y and 3D for scaling A sensor can be sele
Download Pdf Manuals
Related Search