Calendar

SPIE BiOS
January 24-25, 2009
San Jose, California
Booth 8615
Visit SPIE Web site

SPIE Photonics West
January 24-29, 2009
San Jose, California
Booth 615
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Introduction to Illumination Design Using LightTools
March 2-4, 2009
Pasadena, California
Click here for more details and to enroll

Advanced Topics in LightTools:  Optimization, COM/API, and Photorealistic Rendering
March 5-6, 2009
Pasadena, California
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For a complete list of LightTools events worldwide: visit our website

New Utilities for Modeling LED Sources, Thin Film Coatings, and Source Arrays

We are pleased to announce the availability of 3 new LightTools utilities:

• A LED Library Utility which allows you to model LED sources based on manufacturer’s geometry and measured ray data. 
• A Thin Film Utility which can be used to model surface coatings based on the optical properties of the coatings, rather than performance data. 
• A Source Array Utility which can be used to simulate an array of LED or other sources using a single source definition.

Each of these utilities can be downloaded from ORA’s Customer Service Web site, www.oraservice.com.  User documentation, including installation instructions, is included in the downloads.  These utilities are compatible with LightTools version 6.1 or higher.

LED Library Utility – This utility contains LED source models from Cree, Lumileds, and OSRAM that can be incorporated into your model.  The utility includes mechanical models of the LEDs, and options to define their emittance using measured ray data or apodization data.

For each LED in the Library, a LightTools ray data file containing 5000 rays is provided and can be used for performing first order analysis.   For more detailed analysis, LED manufacturers provide larger LightTools ray data files (i.e., ≥ 1 million rays) for most LEDs that can be downloaded from their web sites.  For some LEDs, Radiant Source™ data files from Radiant Imaging are available in the Radiant Source library or on the manufacturers’ web sites (using Radiant Source data files requires a licensed copy of Radiant Imaging’s ProSource™ software.  For information on obtaining a ProSource license, contact sales@opticalres.com.

Thin Film Utility – This utility allows you to define and apply multi-layer coatings based on the physical definition of each layer in the coating, rather than the performance data of the coating as currently supported in LightTools.  The utility uses a user-defined text file that includes wavelength, index and coating thickness data for each layer in the coating stack.

The Thin Film Utility provides the following unique capabilities:

• Handles refractive indices for materials at different wavelengths
• Preserves the coating stack definition when the model is saved
• Provides a built-in editor for creating new coating definitions or modifying existing definitions.
• Computes and graphically displaying coating performance (R, T and Phase) for multiple angles of incidence and wavelengths, as shown below:

Included with the download is a sample coating file for an simple anti-reflection coating.

Source Array Utility – Many lighting applications today replace conventional sources with low energy LED sources.  This often requires replacing a single source with an array of LED sources, such as in many traffic signals and direct lit backlight units.  The new Source Array Utility provides an efficient method for simulating an array of sources.  Rather than modeling each individual source in the array, the utility allows you to model a single source and uses its definition to simulate an array of identical sources.  This method requires much less memory compared with modeling and ray tracing each source, and saves time in setting up the model as well.

The example above shows a 5 x 5 array of sources simulated by the Source Array Utility using a single source definition. Both rectangular and circular arrays are supported by this utility.

Feedback on These Utilities  – These utilities will be included with a future update to LightTools (they will not be included with LightTools 6.2, due out early next month).  However, we are pleased to provide them today in Beta release via download from ORA’s Customer Service Web site, www.oraservice.com.  We are very interested in your feedback regarding these utilities.  In addition to any questions you might have, if you have suggestions for improving the use of these utilities, including the addition of other LED sources, please let us know via email at service@opticalres.com.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Additions to the Customer Service Web Site

The following additions have been recently made to ORA's Customer Service Web site, www.oraservice.com, under LightTools Support:

• A new training presentation, Advanced Optimization Features in LightTools, has been added under Training Materials. This training presentation covers advanced features of LightTools optimization module including user-defined variable groups, constraints, and merit function definitions via the definition of dynamic link libraries (DLLs) using Visual Basic.
• The utilities described in this Enews are available for download under Utility and Macro Downloads.