What is Rayfront?

Detailed Specification

Rayfront is a platform independent graphical user interface to the lighting simulation software Radiance. It can be run as an Autocad extension, together with the 3Dsolar building modeller, or as a standalone program.

Specification

Rayfront works with the following hard- and software:

x86 - WindowsNT/2000 and later
- with Autocad R14/2000
- with Intellicad 2000
- with the 3Dsolar building modeller
- standalone
x86 - Linux 2.2
- with the 3Dsolar building modeller
- standalone
Sparc - Solaris 2 standalone
Mips - Irix 6 standalone

You can also use Rayfront together with many other CAD and modelling programs, as it reads all DXF files, and translators for a large number of other data formats are included. Just select the free or commercial geometry modeler of your preference, and there will be a way to use it's output data with Rayfront.

Why Rayfront?

There are many reasons why you might consider our software. Let's just look at a few:

Realism: Have you ever wondered why most other visualization software produces so synthetic looking images?
Prediction: Did you ever want to reliably know how your architectural design looks at night? In full sunshine? At dawn?
Verification: Would you have liked to substantiate this knowledge with hard figures?
Scalability: Did you ever simulate a huge project with radiosity based software, and ran up against its scene size limits?
Useability: Have you ever tryed to work with Radiance, and given up after some time, frustrated over it's complexity?

With Rayfront, all those issues are solved!

Features

If it's a valid Radiance project, then Rayfront should be able to handle it. We may have to modify the structure of your data a little bit, but most of it should come along fine.
GUI based access to (almost) all parameters of a radiance simulation. A GUI is always an abstraction of the endless possibilities of the unix command line. But we did our best to preserve as much of the power as we can.
Edit and define materials, patterns, textures and mixtures in all valid combinations within the GUI. Of course this includes the easy use of function and data files, and unlimited nesting of modifiers.
Distribute simulations across the network. Any machine where Radiance and a few additional tools can be compiled, serves as a background processor. Right now, only the binaries for the supported platforms are included on the CD-ROM, but if you want to run Rayservers on other systems, we can provide you with the information to make it possible there as well.
You can control the distribution of jobs across the local network from a single workstation.
Rayfront will run as a standlone application, as an add-on to Autocad or Intellicad, or together with the 3Dsolar building modeller. Import geometry data directly from any CAD system through our DXF interface.
Import luminaire data from IESNA, CIBSE or Eulumdat format files. There should be data available for virtually every luminaire in this world in one of those formats.
Render images, compute daylight factors, workplane illuminance, and evaluate glare distribution.
Postprocess rendered images interactively, and convert them into a wide range of formats.
Check the user manual for more details.

Rayfront combines the power of the most elaborate lighting simulation and rendering engine with several years of practical use in lighting design in one of the largest consulting engineering offices in Germany.

The development of our software benefits from the expertise of many well respected experts working in educational institutions and in the industry all around the world, which helped to test and improve Rayfront.