TracePro’s Solar Emulator and optimization capabilities have helped manufacturers achieve even greater absorption and collection rates. Optimize your design to boost efficiency using collector optics, textured panels, new material layouts and pyramidal structures. The optimized design will achieve the ultimate goal of lowering the cost per watt. The Solar Emulator is the only tool for analyzing 3D designs and simulating performance using standardized definitions for geographical location (latitude, longitude, and elevation). Analyze your design for a specified period of sun travel with multiaxial tracking and irradiance for both direct and indirect sun contribution. Analysis output includes irradiance, candela maps, turbidity calculations, total flux, and efficiency over time.
TracePro’s Solar Emulator and design, analysis, and optimization capabilities accurately predict total energy output when solar collector systems are in real-world conditions. Hundreds of research papers have been written by TracePro users detailing TracePro’s capabilities on solar collection systems.
TracePro’s Solar Emulator and optimization features ensure solar collectors perform at peak efficiency.
Source modeling based on:
Direct and indirect solar radiation
Atmospheric scattering
Latitude, longitude, and elevation
Date and time
User-selectable wavelengths
User-defined parameters also include step intervals, wavelength, entrance pupil, solar irradiance, number of rays to be traced
Irradiance and candela mapping
Total collected energy reported in graphical
and tabular formats over a calculated period
Flux Report based upon sun position
Sun Tracking
Aim-to-sun
Uniaxial
Uniaxial coupled with aim-to-sun
Global position
Predefined city list
Google Maps positioning
Turbidity
Overcast through sunny definitions specified per period
Stray Light
TracePro is used extensively for stray light analysis and related applications, including:
Baffle design for stray light suppression
Analysis of stray light due to scattering, aperture diffraction, and ghost images
Self-emission of infrared and longer wavelength systems
Simulation of polarization effects including birefringence
Simulation of spectrometers and other multi-spectral systems
Thermal effects and loading
Narcissus effects
Diffraction gratings
Due to its generality, TracePro has been used to simulate optical systems operating at wavelengths ranging from the extreme ultraviolet, through the visible and infrared, to millimeter wavelengths. The intuitive user interface and accurate CAD file import reduce setup time needed for stray light analysis.
Medical & Life Sciences
TracePro offers life sciences and medical device designers a powerful, complete simulation tool ideally suited to their needs. TracePro facilitates the design and development process by communicating across disciplines including optics, mechanics, materials, chemistry, and biology. This is extremely important for medical instrumentation and device designers who must communicate system level specifications and design elements to both scientists and engineers.
Medical system designers use TracePro to minimize the cost and time of iterative hardware prototyping and laboratory and clinical testing. Create models by directly creating the solid geometry in TracePro or by importing from a lens design program or a CAD program. Light rays propagate through the model with portions of the flux of each ray allocated for absorption, specular reflection and transmission, fluorescence, and scattering.
TracePro can simulate and analyze many aspects of optical systems including:
Light distributions in illumination and imaging systems
Stray light, scattered light, and aperture diffraction
Throughput, loss, or system transmittance
Flux or power absorbed by surfaces and bulk media
Light scattering in biological tissue
Polarization effects
Fluorescence effects
Birefringence effects
TracePro offers medical systems designers the confidence that the simulated design will predict the performance and accuracy of finished devices, such as:
Fluorescence spectroscopy
UV, VIS, NIR, IR spectroscopy
Flow cytometry
Micro arrays and plate readers
Nucleic acid amplification
Assay, cell, and tissue-based imaging
Confocal laser scanning and fluorescence microscopy
Laser beam delivery systems for surgical instrumentation
Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) Detection
Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET)
For more information on Medical Device Design Using TracePro, view the Biomedical Brochure.
Consumer Electronics
TracePro is a powerful software tool for modeling imaging and non-imaging optical devices. Models are created by importing from a CAD program or directly creating the solid geometry. Light rays propagate through the model with portions of the flux of each ray allocated for absorption, specular reflection and transmission, fluorescence, and scattering.
Model real scattering effects using full anisotropic properties and asymmetric BSDF
Import from three popular optical design programs
Model stray light from lens mounts, packaging, and thermal sources
Analyze multiple paths using non-sequential ray tracing algorithms
List absorbed and incident flux on every surface and object using flux reports
Display flux by volume in laser cavities
Export 3D flux data to third-party laser cavity design and analysis programs
Visualize a laser cavity along any axis using the volume flux viewer
Analyze flux for absorbed, incident, originated, or exiting radiation
Analyze any material or bulk scatter sources for incident, originating, absorbed, and lost energy
Define multiple sources using asymmetric surface emission, including user-defined properties
Analyze birefringence in crystals, including splitting of rays into ordinary and extraordinary components
Track full polarization effects using Stokes vectors and Mueller matrices
TracePro offers industrial designers the confidence that the simulation will accurately predict performance without costly prototype iterations for a wide variety of technologies, such as:
Illumination for machine vision
Laser cavities
Consumer electronic devices
Laboratory instruments and measuring devices
Display Design
TracePro is used by the world’s top display manufacturers for display design. Modern display backlights must meet specifications for spatial and angular uniformity, brightness, and spectral characteristics. Quickly achieving these criteria with a manufacturable, cost-effective design requires powerful, easy-to-use, accurate software.
Flux report for surfaces and bulk media
Polarization effects
Fluorescence effects of phosphors
Birefringence effects
CIE plots
Candela plots
Lit appearance
Luminance maps
Irradiance/illuminance maps
You can be confident that TracePro will accurately predict the performance and aesthetics of finished products with fewer costly prototypes. The software is used to design many types of products:
Projection and flat-panel displays
Edge-Lit and Direct-Lit televisions
Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)
Plasma Displays
Field Emission Displays (FEDs)
Organic LED Displays (OLEDs)
Electroluminescent Displays
3D displays
Head-Up Displays (HUD)
Digital signage
Consumer electronics
Avionics
Medical imaging
Brightness Enhancing Films
Dichroic and Hot Mirror Filters
Automotive
Automotive designers use TracePro to integrate LEDs, HID lamps, and incandescent lighting into cars, trucks, and commercial vehicles. LED-based headlamps are now used on many vehicles. These high-power LED systems must be analyzed to verify performance.
LEDs have long been used for automotive ambient lighting. They also illuminate dashboard and gauge clusters using light pipes and light guides, which employ gentle curves to steer light by Total Internal Reflection (TIR). This is combined with beveled corners that act as mirrors, enabling designers to use fewer LEDs.
Designers of Head-Up Displays (HUDs), windshield systems, collision detection systems, rearview cameras, and backup illumination systems use TracePro to analyze their designs, including:
Illuminance from any interior or display lighting
Luminance maps, photorealistic renderings, and “lit appearance” of instrument panels and interior and exterior lighting
3D illuminance on any surface
Candela plots on any surface
TracePro helps automotive designers visualize the effect of their LED layout, design, and placement through the use of photorealistic rendering of interior and exterior uses, including the illumination of:
Instrument panels, consoles, and other controls
Door handles and window openers
Footwells and storage areas
Trunks/boots and truck beds
Headlamps and tail lights
Warning Lamps
HUD and windshield design
Navigation, stereo and informational displays
Aerospace & Defense
TracePro and OSLO are robust tools for designing and analyzing optical systems for aerospace and defense applications. Both programs have been used to design and analyze many notable NASA optical systems, including:
Designers of military, aviation, and homeland defense systems rely on TracePro for an accurate, state-of-the-art, comprehensive design environment.
When you need to analyze baffles for the suppression of stray light due to scattering, diffraction, ghost images, and self emission, TracePro is an invaluable tool. TracePro can simulate many aspects of optical system performance, including:
Stray light analysis and telescope baffle design
PST, PSNIT, and OAR
Ghost image analysis
Simulation of spectrometers and other multi-spectral systems
Polarization effects, including birefringence
Thermal loading
Narcissus effects
Diffracted stray light
Lighting
TracePro offers lighting designers the most accurate and comprehensive design environment available. Lighting system design requires strict adherence to performance criteria, including spatial and angular light distribution, uniformity, intensity, and spectral characteristics, along with aesthetic factors such as lit and unlit appearance. The result is a cost-effective design that is ready for manufacture. TracePro is a comprehensive, versatile software tool for modeling the propagation of light. Models are created by importing from a CAD program or by directly creating the solid geometry. Rays propagate through the model with portions of the flux of each ray allocated for absorption, specular reflection and transmission, fluorescence, and scattering.
Analyze:
Light distributions in illumination and imaging systems
Lumens exiting, absorbed, and incident at the component and system levels
Candela distributions
Illuminance distribution on any surface
Optical efficiency, luminance, and radiance
Photorealistic rendering
Fluorescence effects of phosphors
Lighting system designers can be confident that TracePro will accurately predict the performance and aesthetics of finished products with fewer costly prototypes. The software is used to design many types of products:
