With photopia | for SOLIDWORKS, you can perform raytrace simulations directly on your assembly models. From adding lamps and assigning materials, to setting and viewing output, everything is done inside of SOLIDWORKS^®. You maintain all the ease of working in SOLIDWORKS^®, with no need to learn another CAD program. This is complete single window optical-mechanical integration. No need to link, bridge, or export files for your analysis and potentially lose fidelity. Work in your familiar CAD interface to increase productivity and get your work done faster.

Photopia includes the most comprehensive library of lamps for the architectural lighting industry. The current library includes over 1,900 source models with a large selection of LEDs, and also includes sun and sky dome models for daylighting device designs. This extensive library avoids the need for the user to create their own lamps and guess at their properties. Having accurate source models is essential to getting accurate simulations of the entire luminaire. Other programs that rely heavily on ray sets may not be as accurate as models in Photopia’s library. For more details, see Mark’s Jongewaard paper about light sources modeling.

Other software allows you to define BRDF (BSDF) data via parameters of various mathematical functions, but knowing what parameters to set is an open question and even then the scattering behavior of many materials isn’t accurately represented by a mathematical function. Although BRDF/BTDF data for standard materials is now being distributed by manufacturers, it is also very important that the optical software company is able to measure custom materials, such as formed aluminum with various levels of polish and anodizing processes. LTI Optics has provided this service since the late 1980’s, longer than any other company, and has more experience in characterizing the important optical properties of materials. Having measured BRDF/BTDF data for the actual materials used in your products is critical to being able to produce accurate simulation results.

Most Parametric Modeling relies on primitive geometry like lines or arcs or splines… but none of these directly relate to how you want to aim light. Our Parametric Optical Design Tools (PODT) give you a direct way to create and manipulate geometry based on how you want your final distribution to look. PODT can be used on anything from simple revolved reflectors to complicated lofted lenses made of multiple control profiles. PODT is all about getting you to a final design quicker. We use these tools everyday on our projects and they significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to optimize a design.

Don’t spend hours tracing over polar plots in InDesign or copying data tables into Excel. photopia^™ | reports^™ will output marketing ready material, perfectly formatted for your spec sheets or website..