IES Blog

8th International Radiance Workshop

Posted : October 30, 2009 by Michelle, Category: Radiance, software

The 8^th International Radiance Conference took place on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA from October 21^st through the 23^rd, 2009. The event was hosted by Christoph Reinhart and Kera Lagios of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Two staff members from IES Boston attended the event, Michelle Farrell and Angela Chan. In total about 80 professionals and students attended.

Radiance was originally developed with the majority of support coming from the U.S. Department of Energy, with supplementary support from the Swiss Federal Government. One of the lead developers, Greg Ward of Anyhere Software, also attended. There was discussion around the improvements that will be available in Radiance 4.0, including a “new parallel computation facility in rvu (formerly rview), and tools for annual daylight simulations with complex fenestration systems”.

While Radiance has been around for many years, it was primarily used by experts familiar with its interface and coding. Some of the presentations focused on how the tool is being integrated with other modelling, and even parametric, software tools. Christoph Reinhart, Kera Lagios, and Jeff Niemasz of the Harvard Graduate School of Design developed a toolbar for Rhino that links it with Radiance and Daysim. Through the use of Grasshopper, key parameters of the design could be changed, and the Radiance/Daysim results respond accordingly, allowing for “the creation of animated building performance simulation.”

Other presentations, such as one by David Smith of Buro Happold, focused on the presentation of Radiance results. After giving a basic introduction to coding, Smith showed how he used Flash in combination with Radiance output to create deliverables such as “simple animations, mapping data to models, and interactive design aids”. The deliverables that he presented show the power of what reports can now contain, making the printed report or image collection seem almost archaic. A truly inspiring presentation that shows what is possible when it comes to reports when you add a little creativity.

A version of Radiance, RadianceIES, is contained within the IES Virtual Environment suite. By using Radiance as part of the IES Virtual Environment, One can use RadianceIES with LightPro or FlucsPro, also both modules in the Virtual Environment, to visualize and analyze electrical lighting schemes using VE’s extensive library of luminaires, or by importing your own photometric files. Furthermore, one can link Radiance to ApacheSIM to account for daylighting dimming strategies when running an annual energy simulation. It is this connection between the modules in the Virtual Environment that makes the IES’ software suite so powerful.

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