Sustainable Use of Light
By Michael
Wouldn’t you like to see how your new product – long before it has been produced – looks like in a real-life ambiance?
As an architect you’d be able to expose your fabulous apartment building in 3D to natural light conditions – thus demonstrating how the evening sun would illuminate the veranda and rays would beam through the windows of the living room. As a mobile device manufacturer, you could virtually look at your product at night and test the visibility of your backlit control panel. As a civil engineer you could test and optimize the ideal orientation of solar panels mounted on the roof of the supermarket which is now equipped with solar energy.
Optis, a software company with headquarters in the south of France, subsidiaries in Japan, the US and Germany, does exactly this! Optis has pioneered their methods for scientific light simulation and human vision since 1989 to help their customers optimize their design processes. Have a look at the video clip below to see how this works:
The benefits of this approach go beyond aesthetic optimization of product design. It has a very powerful “green” dimension with respect to minimizing energy consumption (remember physics class: light = energy). Here are some examples of how this can be used:
- Optimizing energy efficiency of lighting systems
- Optimizing material usage in products while even improving light performance
- Facilitating the design of most efficient solar sensors
Last week Optis was invited with Dassault Systèmes to join the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2009 where the world leaders of “green thinking” met and discussed ideas and concepts to answer the ecological challenges that the world faces. Virtual design in 3D with enabled light simulation may be just one contribution to succeed towards reaching the goal of sustainable and environmental conscious development of products, material usage and energy consumption.
Dassault Systèmes has a long standing relationship with Optis, who joined our Software Community Partner program in 2002. This partner program hosts over 165 leading companies to develop their applications integrated with Dassault Systèmes portfolio across our brands CATIA, SIMULIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA and 3DVIA. In addition Optis is also a partner in the SolidWorks community.
Our partners offer around 500 software solutions “on top” of DS’ offering in specialized industry applications. Our joint customers can tap into this vast source to find the right solution to solve their industry challenges in design, simulation, and manufacturing or for experiencing their product in a virtual world.
Hey, it’s nice to be part of this blog team and to have the opportunity to chat about what our solution partners bring to the party.
@++
Michael
P.S. Sometimes I think that our Software Partner program is one of the best kept secrets at DS … and it’s my mission to change that ! Many more examples of interesting solutions can be cited. Please let me know what types of application domains interests you the most and I’ll try to blog about them.
2 responses to “Sustainable Use of Light”
February 10th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
You’re right!! Optis solutions are awesome!
Here is an example where Optis was involved as a partner.
In 2006, I was part of a small DS team as co-project manager worked with Optis technologies and team on a fantastic and challenging project called at one moment “Agathe”.
The Optis team made in a very short time a tremendous light effect rendering tool for our solution. The tool was able to simulate different type of lights, different type of color light during day and night on different type of materials (skin, glass, plastic, wood, glossy or anti-glare surface, etc.) in different spaces/areas such as an airport hall, an open space office or a lounge. We also tried to matched these Optis results within Virtools composition and into a DELMIA Ergonomics simulation.
It was amazing and the customer was very impressed and went for a strong partnership with DS announced in December,8th 2008 ( http://bit.ly/5QyB )!!
February 11th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Thanks Raym for this very nice application example which helps us to relate technical capabilities with the value generated in the market. Chanel is in the Consumer packaged goods industry. Anyone with an application in other industries?
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