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 .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.