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Switch to photopia for your optical design

Reduce design and development cost.
Accelerate product development.
Deliver better products.
Use photopia.

Direct CAD Integration
for quicker iterations

solidworks certified solution partner Rhino logo

Photopia works directly inside of Solidworks and includes Rhino, giving you optical design tools direclty in your CAD package.

Lamp and Material Library
for improved accuracy

No more guessing at scatter coefficients or spending hours building a light source model.

Photopia has over 1541 materials and 1389 lamps you just pick from the library and drop into your model.

Low Cost for Quick ROI
save up to 50%

With features that match or exceed our competitors at signficant cost savings, you'll have a better tool and save money for your organization, a win-win.

See how Photopia stacks up against the competition

Photopia Features Other Raytracing Software

Over 1389 fully measured lamp models by LTI Optics, including full color data

Not as extensive if included, or relies on a third party library, often not full color data

Over 1541 fully measured materials by LTI Optics

Typically not measured in-house and relies on third party data source

Relevant, standard compliant output, including IES and LDT files

Typically don't generate compliant IES files

Multi-threaded, use all of your threads

Some software charges extra for more threads

Parametric Optical Design Tools

Rely on more user intervention

Optimization and full scripting capabilites in many languages, including Python, C#, and more

Optimization and scripting may use a limited, custom framework

Expert Customer Support from our Project Manager and Senior Optical Engineers

Often provided by junior engineers, not the product manager

Direct CAD Integration For Seamless Designs

Photopia runs completely inside of Solidworks and Rhino, giving you full optical simulation for Solidworks and Rhino.

For users of other CAD packages, Photopia is packaged with a Rhino license. Rhino is a full featured CAD program with advanced NURBS surfacing and allows you to import full assembly models from any other CAD software as solid files. Rhino is also fully programmable via Python scripting, C# and Grasshopper.

Direct Integration

Solidworks

Rhino

Use Photopia for Rhino

Inventor

Fusion

PTC Creo

OnShape

Catia

NX

solidworks certified solution partner
solidworks certified solution partnersolidworks certified solution partner

rendering of color over angle simulation

An Extensive, Accurate Lamp Library

Accurate simulations start with accurate source models. Photopia includes the most comprehensive library of accurate source models in the industry, based on actual source geometry, spectral and material properties. The current library includes over 1389 light source models, over half of which are LEDs. This extensive library avoids the need for you to create your own lamps or use ray sets that often lack accurate emission points & spectral properties and don't include the full source geometry. For example, these images show the model geometry and variable spectral output over emission angle for the Cree XHP-70 LED in Photopia's library.

lamp and material library for raytracing

Fully Measured Material Properties

Accurate material properties are vital for accurate simulations. While other optics software asks you to define BSDF data via parameters of various mathematical models, those models don't represent the true behavior for many materials and you are generally left guessing at the values of the parameters. Real materials require comprehensive sets of measurements to properly characterize them. These include detailed BSDF data and total integrated reflectance and transmittance data. Although some BSDF data for standard materials is now being distributed by manufacturers, that's not enough when you need to characterize your own custom materials. LTI Optics maintains its own optics lab for material measurement and has been constantly improving its processes for nearly 40 years.

BSDF data for library BSDF data for library
BSDF data for library

Meaningful Output for Lighting Applications

Photopia creates photometric intensity distributions in standard IES & EULUMDAT formats and in Type A, B or C coordinate systems right out of the box. You will therefore get the distributions and photometric reports appropriate for your particular application whether it's architectural lighting, automotive, signaling, aerospace, marine, etc. This is particularly important for applications that require standards compliance.

False color showing RGB separation

Radiometric Output

Photopia allows lamp output and all results to be specified in lumens, radiant watts, photon flux and Photosynthetic Active Radiation (PAR) photon flux. This allows Photopia to be applied to non-imaging optical design applications in a wide range of industries including UV curing and disinfection, IR optical sensors, concentrated photovoltaics (CPV), machine vision, etc. Features such as spectral re-mapping on irradiance planes allow you to view how well any wavelength light is mixed. UVC disinfection for air and water applications can also be done with Photopia's fluence rate grids and special reports that compute the total fluence (dosage) based on the medium flow rate.

Optical Design window inside of Solidworks for Fresnel lens Optical Design iside of Solidworks for PODT collimator

Optical Design Tools & Optimization

Photopia's Parametric Optical Design Tools (PODT) creates reflector and lens geometry based on your desired light distribution. These tools are provided directly inside of Solidworks and Rhino and generate native geometry. Creating optical surfaces with these types of parameters allows you to directly see the shapes that result from your desired aiming properties and quickly iterate toward solutions that best meet your requirements within your mechanical constraints.

Photopia for Rhino also provides a powerful platform for design automation & optimization via its integrated scripting. Scripts can control Photopia's PODT geometry, create your own geometry, run simulations, evaluate output, and make design modifications. The nature of Photopia's PODT geometry can often result in quick, single parameter optimization. When many design parameters need to be explored, the included Galapagos genetic optimizer can be used. Photopia's PODT and optimization take into account the actual source size and material properties, without point source approximations.

contact lti optics

Customer Support

LTI Optics puts a very high priority on customer support. The main person providing technical support to our customers is the lead designer for the Photopia software, its product manager since its inception, and our most senior optical designer. Many companies pass the job of technical support to a junior level employee. Having designed almost every type of luminaire within our industry, we have a clear understanding of the types of projects our customers are creating and can help them in a more meaningful way. Although we can't comment on how our competitors handle support since we have not been a customer of theirs, we can say that we get a lot of positive feedback on our support.

What our customers are saying:

"The speed of your responses and the thoughtfulness of your explanations has gone a long way towards helping me to better understand the workings of Photopia. Your dedication to customer service stands as an example that others should follow. Please extend my thanks to all.”

Serge Holoduke, The Light Factory

“We are very happy with the accuracy of Photopia. We have our own goniometer and have made many comparisons between the predicted and measured results. We have found Photopia to be so accurate that whenever we have seen a difference between the measured and predicted performance, our measurements have turned out to be wrong.”

Photopia User

"I have purchased and learned software for the past 10 years and I have never had the quality of tech support I received from Mark.”

Ken Osborn, Dir. of Engineering, PMC Lighting

“I've been a fan of Photopia for several years. It provides me with useful results within minutes which allows me to look at many design iterations in a short amount of time. I find it invaluable for refractors which are nearly impossible to prototype.”

Photopia User

"We've used Photopia for several years and believe it has been the second most important purchase made for product development, second only to to the purchase of an automated punch press.”

Photopia User