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LIGHTING DESIGN - Internal Lighting Calculations Page 1 of 21
LIGHTING DESIGN - Internal Lighting

Calculations
Setting up the Analysis Grid

In this tutorial you will work through the process of analysing lighting levels, then design an appropriate
artificial lighting grid to compensate for low light levels.
1. Open Classroom.eco from the Tutorial Files directory located in your main ECOTECT
Install directory.
There only two zones in this model, one called Classroom and the default Outside zone.
2. Before calculating lighting levels it is necessary to setup the Analysis Grid.
Go to the Analysis Grid control panel, and click the Analysis Grid Settings button.
file://C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Temp\~hhA8EC.htm 11/8/2008
The above dialog box is displayed. Enter values similar to the ones above, making sure the X and
Y Grid Cells are the same (20 and 12), then click the OK button.
Notice that the Z Offset for the grid in the Grid Position section of the Analysis Grid panel is set
to 600mm.
This is an accepted standard working plane height for lighting calculations. You can of course
move the gid up or down to suit your needs. This is necessary if the floor plane is not at ground
level, Z=0. Adjusting the height within a space will affect the calculated light levels.
3. To display the analysis grid, select the floor object then click the Fit Over Selection button.
This button stretches the grid to just under the extents of the object. It also hides any grid points
that are not within the extents of the object.
Before moving on and calculating light levels, it is important to make sure that the analysis grid is
set appropriately. If the grid is altered in any way after calculations have been performed, the
values will be lost.
Also it is important that the boundary of the grid does not sit exactly on the surface of geometry.
If this does happen, ECOTECT will find it difficult to determine if a point on the grid is on one or
the other side of the wall. The result will look quite strange in that it will look light the walls are
emitting very bright light (ie. from the sky).
Calculating Light Levels

1. To calculate light levels, select the Lighting Levels option in the Calculate section at the
bottom of the control panel.
Then click the Perform Calculation... button to display the following dialog.
Enter values similar to the ones above. You may want to set the precision to Medium to hasten
the calculation process (though it will be slightly less accurate), then click the OK button.
The above settings are a worst cast scenario for latitude -31.9. Worst case being defined by an
overcast sky in the middle to winter. This corresponds to a sky illuminance of around 8500Lux. If
your site is in a different location, either enter the design sky value directly if you know it or use
the Calculate Design Sky options.
2. ECOTECT starts calculating values. This may take a while - perhaps a good time to make a
cup of tea...
Once the calculations are complete, try altering the display settings. The above grid is displayed
with Shade Grid Squares and Show Contour Lines on.
Also try adjusting the Minimum and Maximum scale values as well as the Contours value to
adjust the contour increment. To apply these settings hit the Enter key. You should also try
experimenting with the other display options, such as the Show Values in 3D option.
Designing the Lighting System

Once the extent of natural lighting is established, it is possible to design an artificial lighting system to
compliment the daylighting and light the space at night.
1. The first thing to look at before moving on, is the natural lighting system. Using a minimum
design requirement of 300 lux, it is possible to separate the two skylights, as around 700 lux
is being achieved in the middle of the room.
Hide the analysis grid temporarily (Unclick the Display Analysis Grid button in the Analysis Grid
panel) and select one of the skylights. With Point snaps on, move the object 500mm away from
the centre of the room (the easiest way is to snap to opposing end corners).
Now do the same to the other skylight.

2. Once this is done you may like to recalculate the lighting levels to see the effect.
Separating the skylights slightly provides a much more consistent range of levels in the centre of
the room, and reduces the area along the edge requiring additional artificial lighting.
It is obvious that additional light is required along the junction between the pitched and flat roofs.
As well, it will be necessary to provide a strip of lighting along the central roof line for operation
at night.
The two perimeter rows of lights could work from a single switch, however the central row should
be switched separately as it will not usually be required during the day.
The corners of the room are also a bit dark, however if these areas were to be used (which is
unlikely) then task lighting would be more appropriate here.
Adding Electric Lights
1. To add lights to the model simply click the Create Light button, then click a point in the
model.
In this case this is best done in in Plan view. Whilst you can drag the direction vector of the light,
we want it to point directly downwards. To do this, hit the Escape get after you have positioned
the first point.
2. Once a light has been inserted it is necessary to move it up in the Z direction, as the default
creation height is Z = 0.
In side view (F6 or F7) make sure the light is selected, then hit the Z key on the keyboard to move
the light in the Z direction by increments of the nudge value (default = 100).
Move the light up until it is level with the flat section of roof (Z = 2400).
3. Once one light has been inserted correctly, mirror it about the centre of the room.
Make sure Apply to Copy is checked and the origin is in the right position.
4. Now that we have the start of the two perimeter rows of lights, we need to add the first light
for the central row.
This can be quickly done by copying one of the existing lights and nudging it into position in the
Y and Z axis. A height of about 3400 in the Z axis will be sufficient.
5. Now that we have the first three lights we can array them in the X direction, with a gap of
around 2000mm, to form the three rows of lights.
The easiest way to do this is to use the Object Transformation panel (Modify > Transform >
Numeric or Ctrl+T).
Make sure the three lights are selected, then enter values similar to the ones shown to the left in
the Linear Array group.
6. Once entered, click the Create Array button.
The final array should produce three rows of eight lights each, at 2m centres.
At this stage the model may become cluttered with lines from the cones of the lights.
To turn these off, in the Display menu go to the Element Detail pull-right and choose None.
Assigning Light Types

The next step is to specify the right properties for the lights.
1. First make sure all the lights are selected, then choose the Material Assignments panel and
click the FluoroLampStripUnit light material. Then click the Apply changes button at the
bottom of the panel.
2. Now recalculate the lighting levels in the space.
Once calculated, you should be able to display only the effects of the electric lights only by
selecting the Electric Light Levels option in the Grid Settings group.
This should display levels similar to the following.
You will note that total light levels (daylighting + electric lighting) are well above 300Lux,
however the electric lighting alone does not reach this level throughout the room. Thus we need to
either add more lights or use brighter luminaires.
At this stage you may wish to experiment with some of the other types of light in the library or
adding additional lights to attain an even distribution of 300 Lux across the room.
Similar to other types of object in ECOTECT, the properties for lights are defined by the material
assigned to the light. A future tutorial in this section will look at manipulating the light output
distribution or lights and loading in IES data obtained from manufacturers.
LIGHTING DESIGN - Exporting to

Radiance
Interfacing with Radiance

In this tutorial you will learn how to export a file to the RADIANCE Synthetic Imaging software and
generate realistic lighting levels. RADIANCE is not installed with ECOTECT, however it is a freely
available public-domain application from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. You will need to have either
downloaded and installed the free Desktop Radiance software from the Lawrence Berkeley site or
purchased the ADELINE package to complete this tutorial.
1. Open Classroom.eco from the Tutorial Files directory located in your main ECOTECT
Install directory.
There only two zones in this model, one called Classroom and the default Outside zone.
Creating a Camera View

1. We first want to set up a camera in order to view the interior of the room.
To create a camera, click the Camera button in the left-hand side toolbar. To position the
base point of the camera, use the Control key to move the cursor up and down in the Z axis and
then drag it into position. Be careful not to position it exactly on or in any of the wall, floor or
ceiling planes or you will end up looking directly at a flat featureless surface. Once you position
the first node, ECOTECT will prompt for a second. Simply drag the 'look at' node to the other end
of the enclosure as shown.
It does not matter if the second node sits on a plane or is coincident with any particular point as it
serves only to provide a view direction.
If you need to reposition the camera after placing the second node, simply double-click on the
camera object and select either node to move it. The view direction is always indicated by the
'pointy' end (the one with the arrow).
Before moving on and calculating light levels, it is important to make sure that the analysis grid is
set appropriately. If the grid is altered in any way after calculations have been performed, the
calculated values will be lost. See the Lighting Introduction tutorial if you need more information.
Setting Camera Properties

1. To set the properties of the camera, make sure it is selected and click the Material
Assignments Tab icon to display its assigned material.
The Materials Tab is located on the right hand side of the main ECOTECT application window.
There is only one CAMERA material in this model so it is automatically assigned.
2. The next step is to modify the field of view of the camera. To do this simply double-click on
the 'External_Camera' entry in the materials list.
You should now see a dialog box like the one below - change the horizontal and vertical angles to
90 and 60 degrees respectively as shown below and click the OK button.
The camera's pyramid shape should update, as shown below.
Exporting to RADIANCE
Once you have created a camera, you are ready to export to Radiance.
1. To generate a Radiance image, select the Export... item in the File menu and change the file
type to Radiance Scene File.
Basically Radiance doesn't seem to handle long file names at all well. Some of its components do,
but things such as PFILT and PCOMB don't. Always save your Radiance scene files in a very
simple directory structure (such as C:\temp\rad\run1 or something). Never use spaces in the names
or names greater than 8 characters long. Sometimes they'll work, most of the time not.
Once you select a file name the following dialog box will be displayed:
2. Ensure you change all the settings to match those shown above and then click the OK
button.
You should now see a DOS Command Prompt appear and a whole range of command line data
display. Radiance should automatically run, which may take a while. However, it should
periodically display its calculation status as it goes.
If you do not see DOS prompt it is likely that you did not select the Save+Final Render option at
the bottom of the dialog. If you instead see a dialog box asking you to locate the Radiance
Application RAD.EXE, then this is simply the first time it has been run on your machine and
ECOTECT has been unable to find the Radiance directory in all the usual places. Simply navigate
to where you installed Radiance, enter the bin directory and choose the RAD.EXE file. You
should then see the DOS Prompt.
If your DOS Prompt appears and then disappears almost immediately then you are in trouble.
We;ve tested and re-tested the Classroom.eco file with Radiance, so you can be pretty certain its
an installation issue. You could try selecting the Save + Invoke RadTool option, then set the
Pause on Completion option in the Settings dialog box to try to deduce when the problem might
be, however you will probably find the information you need in the Square One forum as we get
quite a few enquiries about setting up Radiance.
You can get quite comprehensive help on all the settings in this dialog by clicking the Help...
button.
Radiance is an excellent tool for highly accurate and quick lighting analysis, however it can be a
little temperamental and takes a bit of getting used to. Whilst you can use ECOTECT to bypass
much of the data entry and command line issues with Radiance, however you should have a good
read of the documentation that comes with it if you wish to use it for more than simple
visualisation.
3. Once the calculation is complete you should see an image very similar to the following pop
up in WinImage.
As selected in the dialog box, this is an illuminance image, not a luminance image. This means
that it differs from a photographic image by showing the amount of light falling on each surface as
opposed to the amount of light reflected off.
Generating Contour/False-colour Images

The real benefit of this is that you can generate false-colour and contoured illumination maps directly
from this image. To do this, simply select False-colour... or Iso Contour... from the Analysis menu in
WinImage.
This will display the following dialog:
Ensure you select Illuminance in the Quantity group and enter a Maximum Value of 4000 Lux to set
the scale. Selecting OK will display the following image if you selected False-colour.
You can save this image as a Bitmap for inclusion in reports by simply selecting Save As...from the File
menu and setting the file type to Windows Bitmap.
LIGHTING DESIGN - Radiance Materials
Using more Complex Radiance Materials

This is a short tutorial on how to use more complex RADIANCE materials from within ECOTECT. You
should have already done the Exporting to Radiance tutorial to make sure that RADIANCE is set-up
properly on your machine and that you can successfully export a scene file from your model.
1. Open the Radiance-Materials.eco file from the Tutorial Files folder in your main
ECOTECT Install directory.
There are three zones in this model, one called Room, one called Box and the default Outside
zone. It is a simple room with a camera and a large box box in the middle. Essentially the box is
the object whose materials we are going to change. It should already be grouped so you only need
to click one object to select them all.
Rendering the Base Model

1. First off, export the model to Radiance to see what material the box is currently assigned.
The box should be assigned the material 'LightBlue'. You can export to Radiance using either the
Export Manager panel to the right of the main application window or the Export... item in the
File menu.
Either way you should be prompted for a filename to save the scene files - simply choose
somewhere like C:\Temp\Test.rif, remebering the problems Radiance sometimes has with long
file names.
You should then see the see the Radiance Export dialog, in which you should ensure that an
Overcast Sky is selected and that the action is set to Final Render, as shown below.
This should produce an image similar to the following:
Defining a More Complex Material

1. Make sure you have set the Default Export Material Directory in the Preferences Dialog.
When ECOTECT exports any file, it can be set to look in both the local model directory and a
global shared directory for matching material files. Simply select the User Preferences item in
the File menu and ensure that you have the item highlighted below set to the Materials folder in
your main ECOTECT install directory.
You can create a your own export materials directory and redirect ECOTECT to there if you work
with a lot of your own materials, however this tutorial uses the 'WoodGrain.rad' and
'BrickRough.rad' files which should already be installed in the default Materials folder. If you
have changed this directory, simply copy these two files to the area you now use.
2. Select the box and assign it the 'BrickRough' material.
As mentioned previously, the box is grouped so you should only need to click on one object to
select the whole box. Once it is selected, open the Material Assignments control panel on the
right hand side of the main application window (the tab with the checkered material swab) and
select the BrickRough material, as shown below.
3. Once again export the model to Radiance as you did in the very first step, this time ensuring
that the 'Check for Material.rad files' item is checked.
This item can be found in the Radiance Export dialog in the Material Definition group.
Checking this option instructs ECOTECT to check in either the same directory as the ECOTECT
model or the Export Materials directory for any files with the same name as any materials in the
model. We have assigned the box 'BrickRough', so ECOTECT will look for a file called
'BrickRough.rad'. It understands that .rad is the prefix for Radiance files whereas if you were
exporting to VRML it would look for 'BrickRough.wrl', etc.
You should end up with an image similar to the following:
If you were to examine the Radiance scene file created by ECOTECT, you would find that it has
substituted the following for the definition of the BrickRough material:
# <== [C:\Program Files\Square One\Materials\BrickRough.rad]
void texfunc BrickRough_m1

4 Xp Yp Zp brick1.cal
0
6 .020 .040 .230 .115 -0.7 0.7
BrickRough_m1 texfunc BrickRough_m2

6 xwrink ywrink zwrink wrinkle.cal -s 0.1
0
3 0.05 0.05 0.15
BrickRough_m2 plastic BrickRough

0
0
5 0.150 .075 .012 0 0.2
# ==>
It has simply inserted the contents of the 'BrickRough.rad' file diectly into the scene file. You will notice
that the material definition ends up defining it as 'BrickRough'. Thus, even though the file system will
recognise a material called 'brickrough' as matching 'BrickRough', the Radiance render will fail as its
material definitions are case-sensitive.
The code inside the file contains relatively straighforward Radiance instructions. For more information
on what they mean if you wish to edit and customise them, see the file RadianceReferenceManual.pdf
in the manuals folder in your Radiance directory.
Experimenting with Different Values

1. As a short exercise to reiterate what we have done, try assigning the box as WoodGrain.
Perform the same steps as above, this time choosing the 'WoodGrain' material, just to show how
easy it is once you have a library of materials. You should end up with an image similar to the
following:
2. If you are feeling experimental, save the ECOTECT model into your own home directory (if
you are on a lab or office machine) and copy the WoodGrain.rad file to the same directory
as you saved the model.
3. Open the local copy of the 'WoodGrain.rad' file in a text editor such as NotePad.
The file should look like the following. The numbers that you can change without having to worry
about anything are highlighted in red. For example, the number after the -s in the second line is
simply the scale of the randomised dirt function. The numbers at the very bottom represent the
red, green and blue colours of the base material colour followed by a specularity and roughness
value.
void brightfunc WoodGrain_b1

4 dirt dirt.cal -s 0.008
0
1 0.15
WoodGrain_b1 brightfunc WoodGrain_b2

4 zgrain woodpat.cal -s 0.016
0
1 0.55
WoodGrain_b2 texfunc WoodGrain_tex

6 xgrain_dx ygrain_dx zgrain_dx woodtex.cal -s 0.01
0
1 0.075
WoodGrain_tex plastic WoodGrain

0
0
5 0.35 0.3 0.15 0.005 0.025
The aim is simply to get a feel for how easy (or obscure depending on your perspective) it is to achieve
different effects with the different parameters.
Don't worry if you mess up this file as you can always copy the original back over the top of it if you
need to start over.

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LIGHTING DESIGN - Internal Lighting Calculations Page 1 of 21

LIGHTING DESIGN - Internal Lighting

Setting up the Analysis Grid

2. Before calculating lighting levels it is necessary to setup the Analysis Grid.

values will be lost.

Calculating Light Levels

Designing the Lighting System

Now do the same to the other skylight.

Adding Electric Lights

6. Once entered, click the Create Array button.

Assigning Light Types

2. Now recalculate the lighting levels in the space.

This should display levels similar to the following.

LIGHTING DESIGN - Exporting to

Interfacing with Radiance

Creating a Camera View

Setting Camera Properties

The camera's pyramid shape should update, as shown below.

Generating Contour/False-colour Images

This will display the following dialog:

LIGHTING DESIGN - Radiance Materials

Using more Complex Radiance Materials

Rendering the Base Model

This should produce an image similar to the following:

Defining a More Complex Material

You should end up with an image similar to the following:

# <== [C:\Program Files\Square One\Materials\BrickRough.rad]

void texfunc BrickRough_m1

BrickRough_m1 texfunc BrickRough_m2

BrickRough_m2 plastic BrickRough

Experimenting with Different Values

void brightfunc WoodGrain_b1

WoodGrain_b1 brightfunc WoodGrain_b2

WoodGrain_b2 texfunc WoodGrain_tex

WoodGrain_tex plastic WoodGrain

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