The

Library

In order to analyze luminaire performance, Photopia includes a Library of measured material properties and lamp properties. The accuracy of the measured lamp and material library is important for manufacturers to accurately predict photometric performance before committing to building a prototype or spending money on tooling.

Overview

We understand you may already have had your lamp or material characterized via another method. While we fully understand the investment you have made, our most important measure of the value of a model is accuracy. We've seen limitations with some lamp modeling and material measurement methods, limitations which negatively impact the accuracy of simulations. If the simulation isn't accurate, it isn't worth running. Designing and tooling with inaccurate simulations will give you incorrect performance expectations. Our customers trust Photopia to know that they won't require tooling modifications on their $100,000 injection mold lens tool. When this level of investment is on the line, we need to ensure that models meet our customers expectations for accuracy, and for this reason, we suggest that every lamp and material used in Photopia be modeled or measured by us.

Raysets?

One method of lamp modeling involves supplying a rayset that describes the distribution. Raysets can have significant limitations and negatively impact accuracy.

Lamp Model Types

Scatter Equations?

Some material modeling requires specifying equation coefficients and exponents and is limited to a 2D representation. Real world materials don't conform to equations, so we have fully measured scattering data, all in 3D.

Our History

We've been measuring materials and lamps for 25 years and designing optics for just as long. We know exactly what it takes to create an accurate optical simulation that will be representative of the final product.

One Source

We're unique in that we provide both optical design software, Photopia, as well as a complete Library created in house.

We write the software, make the model, and design optics every day. No finger pointing to an outside company or unknown limitations because we don't have control or use the product.

We Need It

We're optical engineers. We do optical design consulting every day all day. We need a library of data that we can trust on our projects just as much as our customers do.

We could of course make all our users do the modeling themselves, and do models ourselves for our own projects, keeping everything private. That's just not efficient. Instead we put every publicly available lamp and material we model into the Library for everyone.

Accuracy

An inaccurate Library is useless. If you optimize a design based on incorrect input, you'll only be disappointed with the final performance. An accurate model means an accurate prediction of real world product performance.

With our history, our software and our optical design we understand all that goes into making an accurate source model or material file.