Dialux Videos

Using the website Truveo, I have found several Dialux-related videos from across the web.  I cannot watch many types of online videos from work so I cant tell you what they entail or what their quality is but it’s worth a look. Maybe one of my readers could comment back and let me know whats up with these? They didn’t look like tutorial videos (growns from the readers) but rather showcases of specific projects but I didn’t look at them all and again, I can’t view the videos themselves. Even if they are just showcase videos, it’s still cool to see Dialux in action!

Click here to checkout Dialux videos via Truveo

DIALux now has an official support board

Mr. Willi Bremecker, the Team Leader for Sales at DIAL – makers of DIALux – has informed me that there is now an official DIALux forum on their website! Hooorayy!!!! While I don’t want to chase traffic away from my blog, as a community leader and a believer in community support, I wholeheartedly recommend everyone register on the forum and contribute your knowledge there, as well as here, in an effort to make DIALux as good as it can be or better. Free programs like this need a chain of quality support sites to help the product develop and grow and to assist the community at large with using a program we all know and love. Kudos to DIAL for taking the next step and I hope to see some first class community support at the forum (but don’t stop contributing here either ) LOL

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Another New DIALux Plugin

Hess has introduced a large DIALux plugin with over 2200 luminaires and variations! Kewl They have mimicked their website’s navigation in the plugin’s user interface which should make for easy browsing.

Click here to shoot off to their website to pickup the plugin.

Let me know how it goes!

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ERCO releases new 2008 DIALux plugin

ERCO has released their entire lighting products catalog as a plugin for DIALux available as a download or you may request a DVD. All ULD planning data is included as well as 3D models for the luminaires. If anybody uses their luminaires, let me know what you think.

Click here to get the plugin

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I’m back once again!

Whewwww! Finally, I have sent my companies catalog off to our designer after months of compiling data, creating technical illustrations from scratch, coordinating a 3-day photoshoot, writing dozens of applications notes, and countless hours of Photoshopping! NOW, I can get back to doing all the OTHER stuff I do around here like posting on my blogs!

I am getting great feedback from visitors here about the DIALux sections and it would appear that this blog is becoming a good community forum for DIALux related discussion which is FANTASTIC! Keep on discussing!

STICKY: DIAL is looking for you to make DIALux better

I really do apologize for the delay in posting to this blog, I have been involved in a blitz of graphic work, photoshoots, and catalog design for my company. I’m back now and I have a very interesting development for the DIAlux community. During my hiatus, I received an email from Willi Bremecker who is the Team Leader for Sales at DIAL which is the company that produces DIALux. He is asking me, and therefore you the DIALux community as a whole what type of DIALux tutorials we would want. How cool is that!?! I think that this is a tremendous opportunity for us to contribute to a terrific free program that we all use and love so I am asking you now to think about what it is we want and to thoughtfully comment to this post for discussion which I will forward to Mr. Bremecker, hopefully for implementation. As Mr. Bremecker requests in his email, if there are features or lighting calculations that you feel are missing from the program, please comment on those too. Since the number one complaint about DIALux seems to be the lack of tutorials and/or documentation, now is the time for us to get it together and let them know how we feel and what needs to be done to make this the single best lighting calculations program out there.

I am posting Mr. Bremecker’s email to me:

Hello Craig,
my name is Willi Bremecker, I am the Team Leader Sales at DIAL and until
last year I was responsible for the DIALux development as the Team Leader
Software Development. So I read your article with great interest and I am
happy that you like our work. Also the reactions by your readers is
impressive. Of course I could help you with any help for all your
questions. For example the tutorials. What do you need ? Would you like to
have video tutorials or a document with pictures like “My first Project.
My second Project….”?

When we designed DIALux we tried to keep it as simple as possible. During
more than 10 years of development more and more wishes of users and
demands from the market were implemented. Because of this continuous
growth it is no longer as easy to use as it should. So a few years ago we
designed “The guide”. The Icon Bar on the right hand side of DIALux. You
can select what type of design you are going to make, for example interior
or exterior and than you follow the guide from the top to the bottom. Just
click on those Icons and DIALux enables you to do it. The other thing we
had and still have in mind is to keep the right mouse button the most
important feature of the software. If you want to do something with an
object, make a right click on it. The context menu offers those functions
which are available for that object.

The included manual and online help (F1) is describing all the available
functions but I can imagine it is not enough. So tell me, what type of
tutorials and what topics you want to be explained and I will check what I
can do. The next week there is the light and building fair in Frankfurt,
Germany. We will be present in Hall 3.0 booth A80. So for all the
interested guys, just drop in and check out for the latest version.

By the way. Is there anything you are missing for the american market? Any
diagram or value that has to be calculated? Just tell me about your needs.
We are thinking of going to the Lightfair in New York next year. Maybe we
have to prepare something for it.

Regards,

Willi

Kudos to DIAL for looking to the community for feedback and we hope to get you some real positive, useful information real soon.

STICKY: After the tone DIALux

I’m getting lots of traffic due to my DIALux article and I see a lot of search terms that include “DIALux” in them and there is certainly a lot of clicking on outbound links for DIALux but I haven’t heard back from any readers about what they are doing with DIALux, how it’s going, and what they think about DIALux. I’d really like to know, I’m genuinely interested to get some feedback (as I am sure DIALux would too) from you.

Come’on! Post a comment or send me an email and tell us whaaasssuppp!

Click here for all my DIALux-related articles

STICKY: DIALux Tutorial Anyone?

Still getting lots of traffic about DIALux and a lot of comments. Keep them coming, I and the rest of the DIALux community want to hear from you. Has anybody…..and I mean ANYBODY out there stumbled across a tutorial on using DIALux? Probably not but I thought I would ask anyway. Try Googling “dialux tutorial” with the quotes and see what you come up with. A big fat goose egg!

Anybody out there writing a DIALux tutorial or interested in writing one? I’d certainly be interested in, not only documenting and publicizing such an effort here on my blog, but helping out, i.e. contributing to such an effort. Please let me know.

Keep up the comments, we want to here from you even if it’s just to say “Hello! I use DIALux and I like it”.

Even More Free Architectural Lighting Design Tools!

I just discovered a terrific resource for architectural lighting designers called the New Buildings Institute! I’ll let the NBI explain who the NBI is here: “The NBI works with national, regional, state and utility groups to promote improved energy performance in commercial new construction. NBI manages projects involving building research, design guidelines and code activities to ensure all elements of this chain are available for use by energy efficiency programs throughout the United States.” While the NBI is concerned with the energy efficiency of entire buildings, their expertise and the resources they make available for free are truly amazing.

First and foremost on the list is the absolutely gigantic Advanced Lighting Guidelines: 2003 Edition. This 445 page book is the absolute industry standard on achieving good lighting design and is an absolute must have. The really cool thing about it is that the NBI makes the PDF available for free! It is a “view-only” PDF but so what! The PDF is a terrific resource to have and if your looking to get NCQLP Lighting Certified, you’re going to need this book. If you absolutely have to have a printed copy, the book is available for a measly $70, not bad considering what typical industry-specific reference books cost.

Next the NBI has made available a bunch of photometric files (IES files you can import into programs like DIALux) specifically on skylights and light wells. While we’re on the subject, they also have SkyCalc which is an Excel spreadsheet that is designed to identify the optimum skylighting design for a building and compare the net energy cost savings using various control schemes.

Next they have made available several research reports on daylighting, views, and various other building factors on productivity in schools, retail establishments, and commercial offices conducted for the California Energy Commission. Other reports include skylighting and a baseline report of California Outdoor Lighting practices and energy use. These are excellent references for any architectural lighting designer but of particular interest to anyone working with light in schools, retail, or commercial office buildings.

Lastly there are some other resources that are available free that I will let you find. So head on over to their lighting page and take a look.

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3D Light Design Rendering Using Sketchup & Kerkythea

As promised, I am posting a rendering (using the Metropolis Light Transport rendering method) showing what the great combination of Sketchup Pro and Kerkythea is capable of. The picture is of a simple, small commercial staircase with metal and frosted glass railing (modeled in seconds in Sketchup using a stairway ruby script) and a recessed, vertical surface-mounted, cool-white LED accent fixture I modeled in Sketchup, which are the only lights in the scene. This is just a sample and architectural lighting designers can take the combination to new heights but combine these programs and the DIALux program mentioned below and your well equipped as a lighting designer without spending tons of cash.

PS. Let me know what you think of the image by posting a comment please

Click to view the full sized SU & KT Rendered Image

Click to view the same scene rendered in Sketchup only
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