Dialux

Lighting for interiors and exteriors

Speaker: Prof. Pier Francesco Orrù

 Dialux
From what emerged in the study of the point-by-point method, to obtain the correct value of illumination
of the environment, the matrix of points must be very dense and also the effects of all must be superimposed
lamps at every point of the matrix. It is clear that calculation programs can perform this task in a
sufficiently short time and with high reliability.

On the web, there are various calculation software. Some are distributed by the manufacturers of the lighting fixtures, others
made under GNU GPL license.

Dialux, free software available for download from the site[Link] omakes available powerful means of development.
Integrates into the calculation software, a simple 3D CAD development environment that allows the creation of environments.
internals and externals with the possibility of including common use objects but also objects with specific design. It is
It is indeed possible to create even the most extravagant object and insert it into the environment of interest. Every surface
it will contain details about color and light reflection capabilities.

For an initial approach to the software, a graphical tutorial will be provided that will guide the learner in creating
a well-known environment such as the AB classroom of the engineering faculty of Cagliari. To accomplish this, various
measurements of the classroom such as distances of objects from the perimeter walls, the floor plan of the classroom, size of the objects,
colors of the walls, ceiling, floor, curtains, furnishings. Furthermore and above all, the model of the installed lamps and the
type of the ceiling.

Download and install Dialux from the linkk[Link] (NOTE: the

This tutorial was created with version [Link]. Later versions may contain elements.
differenti but does not change the executive procedure.

At the start of the software, the following screen appears:

Choose a new interior project.

The next screen represents the 2D development environment, that is, the layout of the premises. One can notice on the
the project manager along with the editor. The dimensions of length, width, and height will be modified with the
real values of the classroom AB. It should also be noted that on the right there is the guide. This allows following a sequence of
operations that will lead to the desired output from the user.

Use the local editor to adjust the size of the environment according to the floor plan or the measurements taken in
crazy.
By clicking on the "3D view" icon (represented by a blue cube), a new tab opens.
representative of the new environment.

At the bottom of the 'project manager' banner, there is the 'objects' tab.

It is used to insert elements of the environment and various objects. Alternatively, use the 'Guide' on the right.
Standard elements can be used to represent a variety of objects with particular shapes. In the classroom.
But an object of this type is identified by the blackboard, an object with an unusual design. This can be
made with the parallelepiped object repeated several times with the right dimensions and positioned in space. The pillars,
the windows, the desk, the chairs etc. are instead obtainable from the dialux libraries. It should be kept in mind that the
The position of objects refers to the origin of the axes identified with the coordinates (x,y,z)=(0,0,0) and...
centroid of every object.
Below is an illustrative example. The pillar to the right of the door is built.

Select 'Local Elements', drag 'Rectangular Column' into the environment. This has dimensions 0.8x0.8m.
with a distance from the wall to the left of the entrance equal to 3.75m. When placing the pillar, it will be referenced in the
"Object origin position", the lengths x=4.150, y=0.400, z=1.500, as these are the coordinates of the
centroid of the pillar with respect to the origin. In the 'Dimensions' cells, the aforementioned dimensions will be reported.
L=0.800, P=0.800, H=3.000.

The furnishings of a venue can be made up of single items or in repetition. The desk (dimensions 3x1m)
will be placed on top of a parallelepiped (dimensions 4.4x2m). For the placement of the chairs (dimensions 0.6x0.55m)
in a number equal to 19 for 6 rows, we proceed with the insertion of a chair, modified in its dimensions and color.
to finish with the positioning of the remaining ones using copy-paste. Given the particularity of the procedure, it will be seen
in detail each step.
One can notice in the project manager, the tree that leads to the choice of the searched item. It is also noted that the
the dimensions of the chair do not match the actual dimensions. Therefore, modifications are made to these and to
rotation of the object by 180 degrees.

The color of the chair is not of substantial importance. The design of the classroom lighting takes into account
In common usage, there are students on the chairs. Therefore, they cannot interact with the lighting of the room.
However, for a representation that is as realistic as possible, the color of each individual surface can be modified.
In this specific case, the chair is made up of 96 small surfaces. It is unthinkable to change the color of each individual one.
surface. Dialux provides the 'Filling Patterns' available in the third tab at the bottom of the manager
of the project. The use is simple. You drag the pattern onto the surface of interest and it will take on the appearance
desired.

At this point, with a simple copy-paste, the entire furniture is created.

The representation of the blackboard requires the ability to move between spatial coordinates. Those who have
such familiarity, they can create similar objects without much difficulty. For those who do not have this aptitude, it
it is advisable to have a paper representation in advance so that you can obtain the desired distances directly.
from the graphic representation.

In the following screen, you can notice the presence of gray curtains, made with extended parallelepipeds.
but of reduced thickness, the walls a bright yellow color, the floor a uniform color, and the chairs gray. For
to adapt the objects to real colors, it will be enough to select the object and change its characteristics, or,
drag the plot onto the object.

The representation of the venue is finished.

Now we proceed to the planning of the lighting.

In the highlighted area of the data of the classroom, one of fundamental importance is represented by the type of ceiling and
of the lamp. Furthermore, in order to reproduce the current system in the software, the number of lamps is important and the
their arrangement. As for the ceiling, it was not possible to trace back to the installed model as the
The identification tag is likely glued to the back. It would therefore be necessary to remove the ceiling light. The only
a determining element is the presence of the blades that allow the direction of the light flow almost
completely down. For the calculations, it will be sufficient to find the plug-in for dialux of a device.
illuminant similar to the present. The data of the lamp are read. It is a linear fluorescent lamp of the
PHILIPS model MASTER TL5 HO ECO=45/49 W/840. With this data, one looks for as many as possible on the manufacturer's website.
possible information.
The site is located at the following linkk [Link] is presented as follows:

If you search in the 'Products and Solutions' tab, the online catalog appears. A screen appears that allows navigation.
in various ways. In the case of a study room, it is possible to conduct a search by type of application. You select
Offices
By selecting 'Work Areas,' you can find TL5 linear fluorescent lamps.

On this page, you can find both fluorescent lamps and ceiling fixtures. You proceed by selecting
Ceiling fixtures. At a later time, returning to this same page, you will be able to select the
relative to the 'Linear Fluorescent TLS' lamps.
What appears is the following screen:

La tipologia di interesse èla “Smartform TCS460”. Selezionando questa appare la schermata che segue:

The acronym of the installed lamp provides important indications. It is a lamp that consumes 45W.
electric but provides the equivalent of a 49W lamp. In addition, W/840 is the code for a lamp of the color
cold white. Scrolling through the lines, one finds ceilings with 49 Watt lamps but with the code W/830 which indicates color
warm white and ceilings that mount 45 Watt lamps with the code W/840. Practically there is none among the products
exactly what was sought.
Among the two pieces of data, the most important is the color, also because the software will allow us to modify it.
light output emitted. For this reason, download the plug-in for Dialux by clicking on 'Details' and then on 'Plug-in'.
software

Returning to the previously abandoned page, we continue with the selection of the installed lamp.
the page is as follows:

The last type is the one sought. Select the 'MASTER TL5 HO Eco'.
The next screen is as follows:

The penultimate lamp is exactly the one sought. The technical sheet is downloaded in order to find the luminous flux and
you can then insert it into the software.

You can now proceed with the software database update by clicking on 'Select lamps' from the guide.
A window opens in which two operations will be performed. The first, by pressing the 'Import' icon, involves the
selection of the downloaded file of the ceiling and then importation into the software. For the second, selecting
"Producer", you search for the freshly charged device and at that point you press "Acquire". The lamp is thus
loaded into the project.

Selecting 'Insert lamp field' from the guide, the ceiling model appears in the project manager.
inserted with the possibility of modifying the fields. From the technical data sheet of the lamp, we find a luminous flux of
4900 lm and a power of 45 Watts. We apply a correction factor that takes into account the decay of
light flux of the lamps equal to 0.9 as the lamps are sufficiently new.
Once this is done, select the 'Mounting' tab. You will need to install 24 lighting centers arranged in 4 rows. During the phase of
measurement it was noted that the arrangement of the centers was done leaving out part of the classroom equal to the
distance of the blackboard from the wall. For this reason, 'y' must be reduced to 8.700 meters.

The height of the usable surface is calculated at 0.850 meters from the floor, equal to an average between the height of the lectern.
and the workstations of the students. This information allows to verify the trend of the isolines
to the indicated quota. However, subsequently, this quota will need to be changed to verify the uniformity
of the enlightenment. In fact, this quota is lower than the height of the pulpit, so during the calculation phase, the
software will read the illumination values under the podium.

Select 'Insert' to arrange the lighting fixtures symmetrically in the center. For other types it is
It is possible to modify this arrangement from the 'Arrangement' tab. In the event that it is necessary to insert
symmetric lighting devices, but if you want to eliminate one or more, it will be sufficient to click on a device with
Right-click and select 'Separate'. In this way, the light centers will not be understood as a single unit.
body but as individuals.
Clicking outside the project environment (white area of the 3D view), in the project manager
A series of cards appear that take into account the maintenance cycle of the lamps, reflection coefficient
of the walls and geographical orientation of the building in order to take into account the influence of natural light.
to obtain, during the verification process, values as reliable as those obtained from the software, it was decided to obscure
completely the room neglecting the presence of windows so as to take measurements with the luxmeter at
windows closed possibly on a winter day or late evening. As a planning method of
maintenance can choose the "Clean location with a three-year maintenance cycle" with a coefficient of 0.67.

The guide recommends inserting calculation points or surfaces. This can be omitted as there is no
specific interest but rather global. However, a marginal area will be inserted to verify the relationships between
the minimum illumination on the maximum and minimum on the medium. To do this, select from the manager's tree
project, 'Usable Surface' where it will be possible to modify the height of the work surface which must be greater
from the desk level. It is set at 1.0 meters. The marginal area can be set at 1.0 meters to avoid clutter.
of the blackboard.
In Dallaguida, select 'Start calculation' and check all the items. Then proceed with the suggested calculation.
to be carried out with the 'Very precise' method. The calculation times are slightly longer but lead to results
significantly better. The window appears:

At the end of the calculation, it will be possible to carry out numerous checks. The isolines and the representation will be shown.
of enlightenment with the method of offset colors or with chromatic variation associated with variations of
lighting. With this method it will be possible to verify the actual values against the calculated values. The software allows
in addition to checking the lighting point by point, simply hovering the mouse over the point of
interesse. Nella parte più bassa del software si leggeranno i valori cercati.

The place now presents different colors thanks to the lighting installed:

Selecting the shortcut keys 'Display contour lines of the usable surface in CAD' produces an image
reporting the isolines to the height of the useful surface set for educational purposes at a height of 0.850 meters
demonstration of the disturbance of the desk for the verification of illumination levels. In this case,
the minimum illumination would be around 30 lux measured below the desk level. The result that would be obtained
it would not be consistent with the reality required in the work area.
Selecting "Staggered Color Representation" instead yields the following image:

At the bottom, you can see values in lux and cd/m.2related to the point with coordinates x=0.127, y=2.290 and z=0.00 m.

Another possibility offered by the program is to render the room with the lighting created.
To do this, a software installed together with Dialux called POV-Ray is used. The corresponding selection button
Quick is located at the top right next to another command that may be useful: 'Create video' further possibility
software offer. To use the rendering function, it will be sufficient to rotate the 3D model as desired
until finding the right framing. There should be no objects obstructing between the lens of the virtual camera and
the environment. In that case, the resulting image will appear partially or completely black.
Here are some examples.
To create a video, the following steps are taken:

- Frame the classroom from above to see the exact path of the camera;
- Press 'Create video';
- Select with multiple points the path taken by the virtual camera. With a few attempts, it will be clear.
the use.
- Create the video. This can be done in very high resolution or in various compressed formats.

An example of the video can be downloaded from the course's reference site. The video was made with strong
compression to reduce weight. The software allows higher resolutions even at the limit without any
compression.

The results output has been achieved.

Selecting 'Output' from the guide, an endless number of items appear in the project manager that
they can be selected or deselected at will. With this option it will be possible to print a
complete technical report. The student is left to experiment with the various solutions proposed by the program.
Once you have selected the items of interest, click on the shortcut button located at the top left "Save output
"Come PDF." An example can still be downloaded from the course reference site.

The objective of this tutorial, in addition to providing the basics for designing lighting systems, is to
verification of illumination values provided by the software with the values measured on site. At the end of the drafting of
In the project, we went to classroom AB and with the windows closed and the lights off, the influence of lighting was measured.
natural light coming from outside. On the desk, an illumination level of 11-12 lux was measured. Such a value
The low value is therefore negligible for the purposes of a rough assessment. With the lights on, the values measured in the classroom with the
The results obtained from the instrument were far superior to those provided by the software.

What could the reasons be?

The reasons are multiple:

The luxmeter was not positioned at the height of the reference plane, so there is a significant variation.
caused by the angle of incidence of the light emitted by each lamp. Solution: position the lux meter at
a height exactly equal to the reference one which in this case is equal to 1 meter.
The instrument was not positioned at the exact same point of coordinates (x,y) for which, as in the case
there is a greater predominance of one group of lamps rather than the others. Solution:
check the exact point perhaps orienting oneself with the position of the lamps in the drawing.
The tone, color, and reflection coefficient of the ceiling, walls, and floor as well as the
Items present in the classroom do not correspond to the truth. Solution: prefer the measurements taken towards the
the center of the classroom rather than the margins.
In this specific case, it was not possible to determine the brand and model of the installed ceiling, so the
Photometric solid could be significantly different. A search was conducted on the internet.
but with vain results. Solution: trace back through the documentation available in the faculty's archives to
model installed in the classroom. For practical reasons, it was not possible to conduct the research. One had to settle.
to maintain a margin of error due to this problem.
The most important reason, however, lies in the maintenance of the lamps. The calculation made by
Dialux is correct if we consider that the maintenance coefficient of the lamps has been set to
0.67 relative to a clean room maintained every three years. The measurement of brightness has been
carried out at a time distance of about three months from the last maintenance performed. It appears
therefore, the correct coefficient for the calculations is significantly higher. Raising this value to 0.85, one
increase of over 200 lux has been obtained at certain points, that is, the measurements taken
they correspond to the calculations made by Dialux.
This highlights the great importance that must be given to the maintenance of equipment.
The experience made with the lighting system is not singular. All systems are affected by the reduction.
due to low maintenance performance. A good maintenance strategy is certainly fundamental
importance.

Below is the image related to the calculations made with the new maintenance coefficient:

One can notice the color variation compared to the previous image. For example, on the lectern, it has shifted from
a yellow to a red or a variation of about 200 lux.

Si riporta anche un’immagine con le isolinee dalla quale si conferma il notevole incremento:
NOTE: this tutorial has been developed based on the installed lighting centers. For other manufacturers, the system
the import of plug-ins can vary significantly. Some manufacturers release additional software that
they allow the selection of the lighting center and from this the sending of the necessary plug-in directly in Dialux.
also note that there is a vast range of lighting centers and many manufacturers, so the realization of
a lighting system can sometimes be complex. However, after this tutorial, the difficulties will be
definitely reduced.

The technical datasheets for the ceiling and the lamp are further attached. Please note that the datasheet
the ceiling technique does not correspond to that entered in the program as the download is not available
moment of drafting this note. A sheet of the ceiling with code is still included.
color W/830 for the purpose of identifying the points of interest. The actual data can instead be displayed by following
the above procedure on the manufacturer's website.

Two output reports are attached. The first refers to the maintenance coefficient of 0.67 and the second
pair at 0.85.