topic Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Simulating Light Travel and Focus

meltcow — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 20:34:02 GMT

Does anyone know if there is a way to simulate light transmission? I wish to test different reflector designs for an LED light to see which direct/focus the light most efficiently. It would also be a boon if there was a way to simulate the effect of the lens on light transmission. I am assuming this is a task that Fusion 360 is not suited for, but I am compelled to ask.

Regards,

Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus

henderh — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:51:21 GMT

Hi meltcow,

As far as I know, there isn't a way to simulate light transmission in any of Fusion's Simulation study types.

It would be painstaking, but I'm wondering if you could use a sketch and create lines to represent an incident and reflection paths. Geometric constraints could be used along with a construction line that is tangent to the reflector at a point of interest. You could then adjust the location of the sketch point used as the reflection point, to view different angles.

This may be simplifying things greatly, as you may need to incorporate Snell's law to account for the transmission through different media (entering glass from air, for example) to increase accuracy.

Best regards,

-Hugh

Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus

TrippyLighting — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 20:11:21 GMT

It depends on how detailed and technical you want/need to get.

I use Indigo Renderer to simulate my LED lighting systems and it's pretty spot on. The render engine in Fusion 360 is not quite as developed as Indigo.

Another solution would be Thea Renderer which also has a plugin/converter for Fusion 360. It allows some photometric analysis.

Real optics analysis softwares used in the lighting industries are out of reach price wise and also have a steep learning curve.

Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus

etfrench — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 20:23:19 GMT

I needed the opposite effect in a lens hood as I wanted to model blocking light from outside the field of view hitting the lens. I used the mirror command to show the light paths:

Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus

TrippyLighting — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 20:28:19 GMT

If you model the emitter realistically enough, you can simulate the light blocking effect nicely with the Fusion 360 render engine.

You'll have to turn down the environment lighting several magnitudes to see the weak emitters in Fusion 360.

Refraction and as a result caustic effects are really weak in the Fusion 360 render engine. Unbiased render engines such as Thea, Indigo and Luxrender do a very good job of simulating these realistically

Re: Simulating Light Travel and Focus

henderh — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 21:31:06 GMT

Transmitting through a lens version is attached.

A colleague and I were working on a more elegant approach, using rendering and an emissive appearance as the light source. [Edit: I didn't notice that TrippyLighting has already gone down this road before]

I enjoy looking at your cool Fusion wall display here in the L.O. office Trippylighting!

Best regards,

-Hugh
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