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Software extension for Autocad/Intellicad to export data to the Radiance lighting simulation package of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Autocad/Intellicad entities can be selected and filtered in various ways.

Entities are sorted either by color or by layer. The sorting results in seperate files written for every layer or color. Optionally other files can be created. This includes initial material definitions (plastic with the color as visible in autocad), a setup of sun and sky and a rif file as direct input to rad(1).

Only entities that are visible (that is their layer is on and thawed) will be exported, even when nested in a selected block. This provides another method of filtering elements of your drawing and is especially useful when you want to update only part of a scene.

The layer name or color number will be part of each respective filename to make it an unique identifier. The pipe character "|" used by Autocad/Intellicad within layernames associated with externally referenced blocks, as well as the dollar sign "$" are replaced by an underscore "_" as they are illegal or at least confusing characters for filenames on most systems.

Radout is installed, if the files "radout.arx" and "radout.dcl" are placed in a location which is included in your Autocad/Intellicad search path. In the Autocad "Tools" menu select the "Options" entry. In the opening dialog select the "Files" tab. The relevant path type is "Search Path for ObjectARX Applications". You can add the Radout directory to this path for Autocad to find it.

When ACIS models in Autocad are supported, then the "acgex##.dll" and "acbr##.dll" files also need to be installed in a place where Autocad can find them. It is best to keep them in the same folder together with the application, so that the above path configuration will help Autocad to find them as well.

Load the program through the APPLOAD dialog or by entering (arxload "radout") (including the parens) at the Autocad/Intellicad command prompt.

The program is started by typing radout at the Autocad/Intellicad command prompt. This will open a dialog box to configure all export options:

Write Filetypes:

The settings in the upper right frame specify which file types to export:

Radout does not edit the exported files. Every time you export data, any existing files with the same names will be overwritten without warning.

Geometry files

This switch is on by default, as it is the basic purpose of the program. Turning it off will disable the list of sampled entity types and the sampling mode selection.

Materials file

The materials of the exported objects will have the same color (a plastic) as they appear with in autocad.

Radiance Input File (rif)

This file can be given to the rad(1) program and contains the basic information needed to run a simulation.

Exterior daylight file

This option sets the parameters of natural lighting as required by gensky. The input fields activated by this option determine your location (Longitude/Latitude) and time of day and year (Month/Day/Hour/Timezone).

Sampling modes:

The settings in the lower right frame let you specify the way the geometry will be converted.

Assign materials by:

Select the sorting method out of the following.

Color

The Autocad/Intellicad color number as visible on the screen. This is the default and will help you when you organize your drawing "visually".

Layer

The layer of every subentity (the one which this entity is created on). Choose this method if you use a conceptual layering system independently from screen display colors.

The concept of floating layers and colors within (nested) blocks is fully supported. That means a subentity within a block with on layer "0" and/or with the color "byblock" will appear on the layer and with the color of the containing block. This continues recursively if the block has those properties as well until a level with explicitly defined properties or the top level block is reached. Toplevel entities with the color "byblock" are drawn with color nr. 7 (white).

Distance Tolerance for arc approx:

Arc entities and arc segments of polylines have to be meshed for the use in Radiance. This value specifies how smooth these meshes will appear in the final image. Higher values will make smoother surfaces. The default of 0.1. It is recommended to test for optimised settings, balancing file size and visual accuracy, since the optimal settings depends on the size and scale of your model.

Angle Tolerance for arc approx:

(This option is not available for all versions of Radout) The surface normal of neighbouring mesh elements will not differ by more than this amount in degrees. The default is 15.0 degrees, which usually gives reasonable results. The effect of this setting is independent of model size and complexity. Please note that very low values (eg. below 2.0 degrees) can lead to unreasonably big output files and may even crash Autocad/Intellicad when running out of memory.

Output scaling factor

Output geometry will be scaled according to this factor. Radiance preferrably uses international (SI) units, ie. meters.

Geometry to Export:

The switches in the left column specify which entity types get extracted from your drawing and what type of surface they will result in. By default all entities that visible as a surface in Autocad/Intellicad (opaque for the hide and shade/render commands) are activated. Some other entity types can be used to simplify modelling but are rendered differentely in Autocad/Intellicad than in Radiance. Those are off by default and have to be enabled by the user explicitly.

All polygons should keep their orientation as created in Autocad/Intellicad determined by the right hand rule as explained in the Radiance tutorial. Entities extruded by thickness will be inverted if their thickness value (or "PDSIZE" for point entities) is negative. 2d-Polylines and lightweight polylines are treated the same.

The supported export types and their results are:

3DFACEs

3dfaces will be split to two triangular polygons if not planar.

Extruded TRACEs

Traces will appear as a single polygon or as a box if the thickness is non-zero.

Extruded SOLIDs

Solids will appear as a single polygon or as a box if the thickness is non-zero.

Extruded CIRCLEs

Circles will appear as a ring with a inner radius of zero or as a cylinder/tube with a ring at either end if their thickness is non-zero.

Extruded ARCs

Arcs with non-zero thickness will be segmented according to the given arc tolerance.

Extruded LINEs

Lines with non-zero thickness will appear as a single polygon.

Extruded 2D-PLINEs

2d-polylines with non-zero thickness will appear as a set of polygons.

Wide 2D-PLINEs

2d-polylines with a non-zero starting width set in their header entity (not the vertexes!) will appear as a polygon following the trace of the polyline with a constant width. This option will override the one below for poly- lines that match both categories. Together with a thickness and the respective option set this will will result in a kind of a quadrilateral worm.

3D-MESHes

The Faces of 3d-polygon meshes will appear as a set of polygons ignoring spline fits of any kind. Nonplanar faces will be split into two triangles.

POLYFACEs

The faces of polyface meshes will appear as a set of polygons. Nonplanar faces will be split into two triangles.

Closed 2d-PLINES

2d-polylines with the closed flag set in their header entity will appear as a polygon of the shape of the polyline. Polylines with a width will not follow this rule if the respective option above is chosen as well (Wide 2d-plines). Together with a thickness and the respective option set this will result in a prismatic volume of the shape of the polyline. This option is off by default.

POINTs as Spheres

Point entities will appear as spheres or bubbles depending on either their thickness (if any) or else the value of the Autocad/Intellicad system variable "PDSIZE". if the result is zero the entity is ignored. This option is off by default.

ACIS entities

The three items relating to ACIS solid modelling entities will be disabled in Intellicad or older versions than Autocad 2000.

File Names:

Basename for Output:

The names of all output files will start with the string entered here. Default is the name of the drawing file.

OK/Cancel buttons

The OK button starts the exporting after you have selected the entities you wish to extract. The Cancel button discards all the setting you have made and terminates the program.

Program files

radout_r[##].arx
radout_ic[##].dll

Main program file (alternatively), where [##] is the Autocad/Intellicad release

radout.dcl

Dialog box definition file

acgex[##].dll
acbr[##].dll

Autodesk support libraries for ACIS support (both together), where [##] is the Autocad release. Autodesk permits to redistribute those files with applications that need them.

Additional Files

radout-manual.html

This File.

radout-readme.html

general info.

Data files (generated by Radout)

"Prefix" is the base name specified in the configuration dialog.

<prefix>_l<layername>.rad

Geometry data written with the Layer samplemode set.

<prefix>_c<colornumber>.rad

Geometry data written with the Color samplemode set.

<prefix>_mat.rad

Material definitions for exported files.

<prefix>_sun.rad

Daylight source definitions.

<prefix>.rif

Radiance input file for rad(1).

Please note that the AME solid modelling package by Autodesk as included in Autocad R10-R12 generates surfaces with surface normals pointing to the inside of the created volumes (at least most of the times).

Models created with the AME Solid modelling package must have surfaces defined with the command "SOLMESH". Otherwise they consist of only wireframe information wich cannot be extracted by Radout.

The "SOLID" entities in Autocad/Intellicad, which can be extracted with the "Extruded and flat Solids" option, have nothing to do with solid modelling, AME or ACIS. These are a feature out of the 2D days of Autocad and are just flat quadrilateral faces which appear solidly filled when viewed from top. They form quadrilateral prisms if extruded, which can only be done in a right angle to their ground plane.

Custom entity types defined by 3rd party applications ("proxies", previously "zombies") are ignored, with the notable exception of ACIS solid modelling entities starting with Autocad 2000.

For multiple inserts, only one item is exported.

On SGI systems, if the last (closing) segment of a polyline is an arc, it end up in a very strange position. This happens most often with donuts.

Philip Thompson (original author)
Georg Mischler (current copyright owner)

ADS and ARX Programmers Reference Manuals, Autocad Reference Manual and Customization Guide for Autocad, AutoDesk Inc.

Tutorial and manual pages of RADIANCE 3.1, Synthetic Imaging System. Gregory Ward Larson, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 1994-1998 Philip Thompson, Boston MA, USA.
Copyright © 1999-2016 Georg Mischler, Munich, Germany.
 
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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SOFTWARE.