New Features in LightTools 6.2 for Display Design

By DE Editors

LightTools 6.2, the premier illumination design and analysis software from Optical Research Associates (ORA; Pasadena, CA), delivers powerful new features that facilitate the design of a wide variety of applications, ranging from LEDs to displays and luminaires.

The introduction of a backward ray-tracing capability can reduce the time needed to design and analyze systems such as sources, luminaires, and projectors. This provides a solution for analyzing illuminance, intensity, and color at a particular location, or in a particular direction, rather than taking unnecessary time to analyze the entire pattern. It saves time by tracing far fewer rays than a forward ray trace would require to reach the same level of accuracy. In addition, the new LightTools SolidWorks Link Module can reduce design cycle time by enabling users to build 3D models in SolidWorks and import them into LightTools, where they can assign optical properties, optimize the design, and update the SolidWorks model. This capability provides full interoperability, so changes made in one program are updated in the other.

LightTools 6.2 also improves modeling of white light LEDs, now widely used in lighting and displays, with the added ability to specify materials with multiple phosphor particles, along with their size and density distributions.

LightTools' enhanced Backlight Pattern Optimization utility improves the design of keypads, dashboards, and instrument panels.

For more information, contact Optical Research Associates.

For recent DE coverage, see “CODE V 10.0 for Complex Optical Systems,” (Dec. 2008).

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.