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This page explains the required configurations to run Rayfront, and some possible setups for special needs. Note that the syntax "<...>/rayfront" always refers to the actual location of the Rayfront installation directory on your system.
On unix systems, there is a "rayfront" file in each "<...>/rayfront/platform/<platform>/bin/" directory. This is a /bin/ksh script that will determine automatically in which directory it resides, and then configures all the required environment variables for Rayfront to run correctly. The file "rayserver" is an exact copy of "rayfront". It will start the Rayserver daemon if called by that name. Both scripts will load the "rfcore" executable with the right arguments to do the actual work. No further configuration should be necessary to make this work on your system.
On Windows, the "rayfront.exe" program is a normal executable binary file. This program basically does the same configuration setup as the unix scripts, but also contains all the core functionality. The "rfcore.exe" program is only used to run the controlling processes for the acutal simulations.
Both the unix scripts and the Windows binary will only work when residing withing the correct platform specific "bin" directory. If you want to move a Rayfront installation to a different place, you'll have to move the complete installation directory tree.
(Not supported with demo versions)
This configuration option is only required if you
want to run remote simulations on other hosts in your
local network.
In the directory "<...>/rayfront/config", make a copy
of the file "hosts.dst" to "hosts" and
edit the new file to
reflect your network environment.
This will enable you to run
simulations on remote systems in your local network,
provided that both systems have access to the project
directory through their local view of the file system.
If you only want to run Rayfront on a single
standalone system, then you can skip this configuration.
On Windows, the installer will add the directory "<...>\rayfront\platform\win32\bin" to the %PATH% environment variable. If the installer is run with administrator privileges, then this registry modification will be made for all users, otherwise only the current user will see the changes. On WindowsNT/2000, this will take effect immediately, without rebooting the system. However, any 16 bit processes, such as DOS console windows, may need to be terminated and restarted to learn about the new path.
On Windows 9x, the %PATH% environment variable is configured in the "autoexec.bat" file. As an unsupported bonus feature, the installer adds the Rayfront executable path to this file. For this modification to take effect, the computer must then be restarted. Note that running Rayfront on consumer versions of Windows is generally unsupported, although we have reports that it usually works on those systems anyway.
The Windows installer maps the file name extension "*.rif" to the type "Rayfront Variation File", which starts the rayfront.exe executable with that variation when double-clicked in the Windows-Explorer.
On unix, you can either configure an alias for the shell script "<...>/rayfront/platform/<platform>/bin/rayfront", or include its directory in your $PATH environment variable. Alternatively, you can also establish a command alias that points to that script. Both methods require manual modification of your shell startup script. If you're not sure about where your shell startup script resides, or how to proceed to make those changes, please ask your system administrator to help you.
If you intend to use the included Radiance binaries seperately, without the help of Rayfront, then you'll have to set the environment variable "RAYPATH" to ".:<...>/rayfront/raylib" (resp. ".;<...>\rayfront\raylib" for Windows), and make sure that the "bin" directory for your platform is included in the environment variable "PATH". If any of those is not present, then you will get strange errors when running the Radiance binaries independently.
If you want to run Rayfront as an Autocad extension, then you need to include the directory "<...>\rayfront\platform\win32\bin" in the Autocad support files search path, in addition to the %PATH% environment variable. This is done on the first page of the "Options" dialog, which is usually accessed from the "Tools" menu.
Since Intellicad uses the %PATH% variable to search for support files, no further configuration is necessary here.
After all this, everything should work. Next, you want to run the program!
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