Desktop Radiance README

New Features of Version 2.00 BETA

Immediately after launching Desktop Radiance, the "Preferences" dialog box is

(optionally) displayed to remind you to define the drawing units and scale.

The AutoCAD graphic editor interface has been enhanced with the addition of dialog
boxes to assist in the selection of graphic entities and analysis components
immediately
prior to synchronization and Simulation Setup.

Wizards are available which allow you to create new, custom furnishings, glazings
and
luminaires to add to the main library database. Three additional menu items "New
Furnishing�", "New Glazing�", and "New Luminaire�" have been added to the
AutoCAD graphic editor interface under the Radiance menu that launch their
respective
wizards.

The glazing wizard links with the LBNL Optics5 program for the creation of custom
glazing assemblies. The Optics5 program is included with this distribution and can
be
installed during installation of Desktop Radiance.

The Quick-start Tutorial has been expanded with more explicit instructions. It is
now
called "Tutorial" reflecting the greater length and detail present in the document.
After
installing Desktop Radiance 2.0 BETA, the old "Quick-start" may still be present in
the
Desktop Radiance installation folder, "help" sub-folder.

The Frequently Asked Questions document formerly only available on the Desktop
Radiance web site (http://radsite.lbl.gov/deskrad/FAQ.html) is now included in the
new
"Tips and Techniques" chapter of the on-line help system.

ACIS Cylinder entities in AutoCAD 2000 are now exported as valid Radiance
cylinders.
Version 1.02 had a bug that created the cylinders with invalid data.

A new Project Database Conflict dialog box has been provided which helps to
determine
and resolve conflicts between the current drawing and the contents of the project
folder.

Desktop Radiance 2.00 BETA Known Problems

Installation Program

Installation of database drivers under Windows 95 OSR1 requires the installation of

the
Windows 95 Y2K upgrade. The Desktop Radiance installer currently knows if you are
running Windows 95 OSR1, but does not know if you have already installed the Y2K
Upgrade.

The Desktop Radiance installation program only allows installation of the program
for
either AutoCAD R14 or AutoCAD 2000, but not both.

Depending upon your operating system version, Optics5 may require several reboots
to
complete the installation of the "Windows Installer" and the other database support

components.

The version of Optics5 always installs itself into the folder "C:\Program
Files\Optics5".
The Desktop Radiance installation program takes advantage of this fact and assumes
that
is where the program is to be found. If the Optics5 installer program is updated
and it
becomes possible to install Optics5 elsewhere, Desktop Radiance will not know how
to
launch Optics5.

Graphic Editor

Desktop Radiance only supports blocks that contain valid material attachments.
Glazings, luminaires, furnishings and sub-blocks inside blocks are not supported.

The "adjust surface normal" tool does not work with some REGION entities because
they
do not have a clearly defined surface normal.

Support for ACIS solids is limited. Currently, only ACIS solids with exact
Radiance
equivalents are supported. For example, the ACIS sphere is supported as a Radiance

sphere, but the torus is not supported because Radiance does not have a torus
entity.
Furthermore, Boolean operations (subtract, add, etc.) on ACIS solids are not yet
supported.

Library Manager

The Library Database distributed with Desktop Radiance 2.0 BETA contains the same
set
of entities as the 1.02 version, but contains small changes to the materials table
to support
the attachment of special materials for luminaires. Unfortunately, the
installation of the
2.0 BETA database will erase any custom materials created with the Materials
Editor.

Previously working in version 1.02, the Library Managers does not remember the
previous sort between invocations and between AutoCAD sessions and no longer
displays
their contents accordingly.

Pressing "Enter" in the Library Manager when text has been entered in the "Find"
field
causes the find operation to be initiated.

Library Wizards
The Luminaire Wizard depends upon the Radiance IES2RAD program to create an
accurate Radiance input file. Currently there is a bug in IES2RAD which makes all
luminaires with a brightness of a multiple of "1550". Manual editing of the .RAD
file is
necessary to successfully create an accurate luminaire. A fix for the IES2RAD
program
is being investigated.

Simulation Manager

Previously working in version 1.02, multiple North Arrows in a drawing are no

longer
functional. The arrows can be defined, but selecting an alternate north arrow from
the
Advanced Dialog Box of Simulation Setup no longer causes the sky to be oriented
appropriately. -The orientation is always that of the last inserted North Arrow.

Simulation Manager becomes unstable after a significant number of scenarios are

deleted.
Subsequent attempts to start a simulation will be unsuccessful.

The stand-alone executable version of Simulation Manager does not show the
scenarios
for the current project if a simulation has not been previously started using the
Desktop
Radiance AutoCAD interface.

After closing an interactive rendering and returning the Simulation Manager, all
simulations appear as "FINISHED" in the %DONE field, even if the rendering was not
saved or if terminated unsuccessfully. Attempting to use the "Display/Analyze"
button on
such scenarios will be unsuccessful.

Image Analyzer

The Image Analyzer makes no distinction between different image file types. For
example, there is no difference between a rendering computed in illuminance mode
and
luminance mode (or daylight factor). Importantly, the Image Analyzer also does not

distinguish between images that contain real-world values, and scalar images that
have
been "flattened" with the use of any of the tools from the "analysis" menu.

Radiance for Windows Engine

A Drawing name with any "space" characters is not compatible with the Radiance for
Windows rendering engine. Rename your drawing using underscore "_" or some other
character besides spaces. Likewise, the drawing should not be located inside of a
folder
name that has space characters in it.

The color of the CIE Cloudy Sky is the same as the color for CIE Clear Sky, namely
blue.
This will introduce a small error in the absolute accuracy of illuminance
calculations
relative to the CIE Standard. However, daylight factor measurements will still be
accurate. This problem will be resolved in an upcoming release that supports the
creation
of custom sky types.

The interactive rendering program (Winrview) occasionally introduces spurious

artifacts
into the images. These appear as spots or blobs of discolored pixels. A solution
is being
investigated.

The interactive rendering program Winrview occasionally leaves the DOS Shell
running
even after exiting the program, or leaves orphaned "rview" processes running. The
shell
window can be safely closed by right-clicking on its icon from the programs toolbar
and
selecting "close." The orphaned processes can be closed using the Windows Task
Manager.

Bug Fixes Since Version 1.02

Installation Program

AutoCAD 2000 is now supported along with AutoCAD R14. The installation program
allows you to select the target CAD platform in the "Setup Types" dialog box. The
installation program also displays the default directory for the version selected
for
installation, as long as it can be found in the Windows Registry.

The significant delay experienced after rebooting Windows 98 machines has now been
greatly reduced.

The problem with Windows 98 machines not booting after installation of Desktop
Radiance due to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file containing "@PATH=" statements has been
fixed.

Graphic Editor

COMPATIBILITY CHANGE: A bug in AutoCAD which caused the program to crash

with an "AutoCAD Exception Error" when the "render" command was executed has been
fixed. The fix required that the block name of our CAMERA entity to be changed.
This
means that any cameras or camera paths saved in drawings created with Desktop
Radiance 1.0 and earlier are not compatible with Desktop Radiance 1.02 and later.
Other
attachments such as materials, glazings, luminaires and furnishings are unaffected.

A bug which caused various drawings to refuse to start a simulation due to an

"Access
Violation" error has been fixed.

The AutoCAD "Finish" command no longer causes problems with Desktop Radiance.
The presence of finish entities in a drawing no longer causes a "CsimulationManager

Error" upon starting a simulation.

Closed PLINE entities now permit glazing and material attachments and will be
rendered
as a Radiance n-sided polygon surface entity.
A problem with the default or "current" camera has been fixed. The simulation now
accurately displays the view as seen in AutoCAD.

A problem with the Preprocess.bat file containing multiple references to the

<blocks>.rad
file has been fixed. Drawings with blocks containing material attachments now work
as
expected.

Using the AutoCAD menubar "move" icon no longer results in the creation simulations

that will not render. The graphic editor now filters out empty blocks.

The "replace all" feature now correctly updates all of the selected surface
entities with the
new material or glazing attachment.

Dimming of luminaires can now be changed after the luminaire has been placed in the

drawing.
A bug which caused an Access Violation Error when the "Show Properties�" command
is used has been fixed.

The North Arrow icon is now scaled properly relative to other Desktop Radiance
icons
such as cameras, and is scaled according the "drawing scale" in the Preferences�
dialog
box.

The material mapping tool has been fixed such that it no longer creates blank
Radiance
modifiers.

The glazings property "as a light source" can now be changed and will be saved with
the
drawing. This feature is useful when a scene contains many hundreds of light
sources or
in situations when you wish to use glass on a surface which is not a window.

A bug has been fixed that caused empty blocks to be exported for simulation if the
AutoCAD "render" command had been used.

The graphic editor no longer allows entities which do not have a 3-D equivalent
(e.g.,
lines without thickness) to have materials or glazings attached, and therefore,
they are not
rendered and will not cause the simulation to crash. If older drawings are used
with
Desktop Radiance 1.02 and it contains a material or glazing attached to a non-
surface
entity, the simulation will not successfully start because Radiance will not be
able to find
a file containing the expected geometry. You may have to use the Radiance--
>Tools--
Show All Attached or Detach All command to find the offending non-surface entity.
This
means that all attachment may have to be re-applied.
Performing a "Find" no longer results in multiple selected items, and the selected
item is
correctly attached to the drawing in all cases.

The reflectance values of the RAL type materials as shown in the Material Library
have
been corrected.

The mounting height for several recessed luminaires has been fixed.

The default luminaire orientation has been changed by 90 degrees to facilitate the
use of
manufacturers' IES Candlepower data.

A bug which caused an Access Violation Error when the library browser was cancelled

has been fixed.

Simulation Manager

Multiple reference points/or and reference grids can included in your drawing,
however,
only the most recently created reference point or grid can be simulated.

Reference grids that are one column or one row wide will cause the error message
"Error in sort grid: Grid geometry is not rectangular" when you attempt to start
the
simulation from the Reference Grid Simulation Setup dialog box. However, the
simulation of this grid will work properly.

The DOS Shell window is now minimized (instead of invisible) during processing and
no
longer pauses after the simulation is complete.

The Reference Grid calculation type of "batch to image" is now fixed.

The Reference Grid and Reference Point simulation quantity of "Daylight Factor" is
now
working. It may only be used with "overcast sky".

The Simulation Setup, Simulation Type of "Test (no image)" has been renamed as
"Test
(Show DOS). Selecting this option will cause the simulation command to be executed

inside of a visible DOS Shell window, and will stay visible after completion of the

simulation until you press the spacebar. This allows you to view the debug
messages and
helps to determine what might be happening in you simulation.

A bug in the Reference Grid calculation which caused the error "scanline illegal
length
error" has been fixed.

The accuracy of reference grid and reference point calculations has been improved
by
changing the default number of ambient bounces to one more than the specified
number
with a minimum of one ambient bounce.

Cancelling the creation of a scenario no longer creates an empty (hidden) scenario.

Custom views appended to a scenario's .RIF file (using the interactive rendering
program), now work both with duplicated scenarios as well as new scenarios exported

from AutoCAD. A patch can be found on the Desktop Radiance download site.

It is now possible to start multiple scenarios from the Simulation Manager to run
simultaneously. This is recommended only if you have a multi-processor computer.

The displayed time in Simulation Manager no longer reads as 12 AM when Noon was
selected in the Simulation Setup dialog box.

Image Analyzer

The maximum size of the Radiance image header has been expanded to 2048 bytes (it
used to be 512 bytes). This avoids the error message "Missing -X or -Y resolution
in
header", however, it may still be possible to encounter this error if an image with
an even
longer header file is opened.

Radiance Rendering Engine

Various missing Radiance support files have been added to the Radiance "lib"
directory.

The interactive rendering program (Winrview) no longer exits if the "cancel" button
is
pressed in the "Save file as�" dialog box. "Cancel" will now return back to the
interactive rendering program (Winrview).

The intermediate sky type now uses "gensky +i" instead of "gensky -i +s". This
makes
the intermediate sky type generated by Radiance conform to the standard CIE
Intermediate sky type.

The sky color for the CIE Clear Sky type has been normalized to 1.0, and the
default
turbidity has been set at 2.0 to match the CIE standard.

Image Analyzer

A bug in the winimage.exe program which caused the error "missing or bad registry
key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE �" has been fixed. This problem occurred with the initial
version 1.0 release when Desktop Radiance has been installed as an non-privileged
user.

Documentation

The online documentation has been updated and expanded to reflect the current
features
of the software.

Broken links to the online help documents have been fixed. You can open the help
system directly by double-clicking on the file "Dradhelp.hlp" in the "Help" folder
where
Desktop Radiance is installed.