Advertisement

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

ElumTools Version 2017.2 Released

From the ElumTools website...

These features are also included in the latest releases of ElumTools 2015 and 2016 to help users working on older projects.

BIG changes were made to ElumTools for this latest release! New calculation points family, new calculation volumes (Regions and Areas), more calculation metrics, new automatic schedule creation tool, and a path to climate-based daylight modeling (annual simulations). Collectively, these changes open up the world of exterior lighting to ElumTools and add a wealth of other wonderful new functionality.

Watch our video

New Calculation Points Family
Calculation points are no longer a property of a Revit Room or Space. All calculation points are now family-based (Generic Models), paving the way for ElumTools to support additional calculation point boundaries in terms of Revit’s Regions, Areas and Lines. Regions are now the method of choice for masking unwanted calculation points, as well as covering irregular exterior environments.

Calculation points can now easily be placed in a number of Rooms, Spaces, Areas or Regions at one time. Simply select the entities in Revit, and follow with a click on the Add Calculation Points command on the toolbar. Editing multiple points instances can also be done in the same fashion.

New Calculation Points Marker
The family marker will be placed in every calculation boundary you select. You can easily hide it using a new command from the Utilities button on the toolbar, or from Revit’s Visibility Graphics. It also comes in three sizes, S, M and L.

The calculation points family marker contains a legend of which modes and metrics have been computed for its associated calculation volume.



Additional Calculation Metrics
ElumTools can now calculate more than just illuminance! You can now compute luminous exitance, diffuse luminance, daylight factor (in Daylight mode), and Unified Glare Rating (UGR) per CIE-117-1995. These additional calculations can be assigned to the same calculation point family during creation (or edit), or to a separate family instance if desired.

New Calculation Volumes
ElumTools can now utilize Revit Regions and Areas as calculation volumes. These can be employed in interior or exterior calculations. This capability, in tandem with the new calculation point family, has made exterior lighting easy in ElumTools. A typical workflow for an exterior parking area may be to use one or more regions for the assignment of calculation points, and then a separate region encircling the entire area to serve as the calculation volume. See the captures below.


You can see the calculation points in the below image. The calculation volume grabs all luminaires, geometry and calculation point families to process the solution.


View Specificity
ElumTools workflows have been dramatically enhanced by allowing calculation modes (General Use, Emergency, Daylighting) and lighting metrics (illuminance, luminance, etc.) to be view-specific. You can show illuminance results for General Use in one view, Unified Glare Rating in another, and Emergency illuminance in yet another view. This permits scheduling of all modes and metrics independently as well!

Furthermore, Regions and Areas are also view specific. This allows Regions representing separate calculation areas to be placed in separate views.

Automatic Schedule Generation
ElumTools now makes it easy to generate your lighting Results schedules automatically using the Create Schedule command on the toolbar.


You can select any combination of items to schedule from the dialog shown.

More-detailed editing and arranging can be done using Revit’s extensive scheduling tools.


Climate-Based Daylight Modeling
ElumTools 2017 paves the way to perform climate-based annual daylight simulations in conjunction with our new application titled <codenamed Theia>. Prepare your ElumTools project for daylighting in the usual way using the Daylight Parameters dialog (in Daylight mode). Next, take advantage of ElumTools’ new “calculate by view” functionality by separating exterior and interior geometry in independent Revit views. Be sure to hide all detailed geometry that will have little impact on the calculation results. Finally, select the Run Annual Simulation command from the Daylight menu. Your environment is exported and automatically opened in <Theia>, where the simulation will run independently of Revit. See our page on Climate-Based Daylight Modeling.

And from the ReadMe...

Bug Fixes: ElumTools 2015.9, 2016.6, 2017.2

  • Improved performance with Collaboration for Revit in A360 environments.
  • Fixed issue occurring with multiple linked documents with identical names.
  • Fixed issue occurring when renaming linked models during Revit session.
  • Fixed issue with mirrored light sources occurring in some cases.
  • Fixed memory leak causing Revit to crash after prolonged use.
  • Fixed Utilities Commands (applies to Revit 2017 only).

ElumTools is brought to you by Lighting Analysts, Inc. Pricing starts at 849.00 USD.

There's more information available on the ElumTools website.

No comments: