Software & Computing: Colored light sources place new demands on lighting design software

摘要

Professional lighting designers, including architects and electrical and municipal engineers, rely on lighting design and analysis software to calculate lighting levels for buildings and roadways. While their designs must satisfy national and international lighting standards in the interest of public safety, they must also address aesthetic and often artistic expectations; good lighting is something we can all appreciate. Lighting design and analysis software must therefore fulfill two roles. First, it must be able to accurately predict the distribution of light in an architectural environment; second, it should (but not necessarily must) be able to generate physically plausible images of the environment. Tables of numbers and plots are useful, but "a picture is worth a thousand words" when designing with light.