LucidShape software for lighting design and analysis

• New Luminance Region Analysis: LucidShape's Luminance Camera Sensor feature performs rapid, high-accuracy luminance calculations and generates luminance images at multiple viewing directions for analysing lit images of light guides, tail lights, reverse lights, stop lights, turn signal lights, and retro-reflectors. Now included with the Luminance Camera Sensor is a ray history sensor feature that enables designers to restore ray paths that correspond to a specified region on the luminance camera image. The new capability facilitates efficient troubleshooting of signal lighting optical systems by correlating regions in the luminance image with specific ray paths and optical surfaces. This significantly reduces the number of design iterations needed to achieve lit appearance requirements and regulatory compliance.

• Fixed Random Seed Option for Simulations: For Monte Carlo ray tracing simulations, it is now possible to set a fixed random seed, which deactivates the randomisation of ray creation and interaction. This makes it possible to replicate the starting conditions for all rays, as well as the random events along the ray paths (e.g., scatter, Fresnel reflections), when you repeat a simulation using the same parameters. By causing the statistical noise to be the same between two simulations, this enhancement allows changes to the lighting model to have a stronger impact with a smaller number of rays.

"New simulation capabilities in LucidShape make the analysis of automotive headlights and signal lights more efficient and reproducible," said George Bayz, vice president of Synopsys' Optical Solutions Group.

"For example, with the fixed random seed calculation, designers can re-simulate a model and precisely replicate previously obtained simulation results. This eliminates statistical variation for subsequent simulations when compared to the previous simulation, which is important when analysing the impact of small model changes on photometry."