Photopia™ 2019 Release

3D Illuminance Surfaces

Type A and B Photometry


Type A and B Photometry

Type A and B Photometry

Photopia for Solidworks and photopia™ | reports™ can now generate and open Type A and B photometric files, commonly used for floodlighting, aerospace, automotive, marine and signal lighting. There are new reports for these photometry types, including axial intensity plots, iso-candela plots, a floodlight summary, and standard automotive, aerospace, marine and floodlight reports types.


Solidworks 3D IP Tooth Light

Blue LED fiber optic illuminating a 3D model of a tooth

3D Illuminance Planes

Now in Photopia for Solidworks illuminance planes are no longer limited to planar rectangles. You can create illuminance planes on any surface, allowing you greater flexibility in assessing your optical design.

Solidworks 3D Surface Illuminance on Airplane Wing

Leading edge of airplane wing showing illuminance on surface

To assign a 3D surface as an illuminance recorder, first select the surface and then choose "Add Illuminance Plane / Add Recording Plane" from the Photopia Command Manager inside of Solidworks. By default, all recording objects and illuminance planes are scaled such that their magnitudes are relative to each other. You can adjust the scale in the Tools > Photopia > General Settings.

Traditional illuminance planes are still the best option when you need to get illuminance values and statistics over your surface. To define an illuminance plane, you'll use the same method as before, first setting up a rectangular plane, then clicking "Add Illuminance Plane / Add Recording Plane" with nothing selected, and then selecting the rectangular plane. You can then adjust grid settings and other options.

Solidworks 3D IP Settings


All Changes

✔ Batch generate reports in Photopia | Reports

✔ Added iso-candela plots

✔ Added axial intensity plots (XY and Polar)

✔ Updated UGR calculations

✔ Added ability to flip rows and columns in Intensity Table

✔ Added MaxItems for legends in plots

✔ Added decimal rounding for output lumens

✔ Added Type A and B photometry in Solidworks

✔ Improved photometric sphere drawing in Solidworks

✔ Improved display of anisotropic arrows in Solidworks

✔ Improved XY intensity plot in Solidworks

✔ Added 3D Surface Illuminance in Solidworks

✔ Added Global and Local Scaling in Solidworks IPs

✔ Added Auto, Aero, Marine and Floodlight reports