Autodesk Building Systems & DIALux Link

Simon Jones, Autodesk UK 10th June 2005 In response to user demands Autodesk have developed a link between Autodesk Building Systems 2006 and the lighting analysis application DIALux.

DIALux Overview
According the the DIALux website, the DIALux lighting design tool is being used by more and more lighting designers worldwide and an increasing number of reputable lighting manufacturers worldwide use this platform to present their data. DIALux is continually being developed and maintained. The current release is DIALux 4.0 and this is available to download for free from www.dialux.com .

Autodesk ABS UK Utilities

The DIALux link is available to evaluate in the Autodesk ABS UK Utilities. To load the functionality, copy AdeskUKABSUtils.arx & AdeskUKABSUtilsEnu.dll to the ABS program files folder (C:\Program Files\Autodesk Building Systems 2006) and use the AutoCAD APPLOAD command to load the Arx into the current ABS session. This arx introduces two new commands: DialuxExport exports engineering spaces in ABS as rooms in a DIALux project DialuxInport imports lights from DIALux into an ABS drawing.

These utilities can be downloaded for testing from: https://projectpoint.buzzsaw.com/client/UKAEC/ABS/Downloads/ABS2006/UK Utilities

Exporting room data from ABS to DIALux

Simply run the command DialuxExport and select one of more engineering spaces to export as rooms.

In the Dialux Export dialog, specify the name of an STF file

Using DIALux
From within the DIALux application, open the STF file which will contain a room for each of the engineering spaces selected. The name of each room will match the name given to the engineering space in ABS.

Note, when using DIALux the metric units of measurement is the metre. For the US market, the application can also be used in feet and inches. Within DIALux you can insert windows and furnishing and view the model in 3D. Windows are accessed through the Place Furniture tree and are bizarrely listed under

Diverse Elements. You can also apply textures to the surfaces such as floors, ceilings and walls.

Key to DIALux is that it links to manufacturer databases of light fittings. These databases can be downloaded locally as plug-ins or accessed across the internet. Light fittings can be loaded into the current project through manufacturer specific portals such as the one illustrated below:

Lights can be inserted quickly into the model as individual lights as groups of lights in lines or arrays.

Lights can be assigned to control groups that can set their intensity for different situations. Also, by setting up different light scenes you can visualize different scenarios such as daylight and nighttime.

Various reports can be output from the model for each of the light scenes. For example:

Contour lines of lux levels at the working height

Wall iso lines

Photometric results

Importing lights into ABS from DIALux

Once the lighting analysis has been completed in DIALux, the project should then be exported back out to an STF file. This file can be read by ABS with the DialuxImport command. From the command simply select the appropriate STF file.

The lights will be positioned relative to the room that was originally exported from ABS.

Working with the lights in ABS

Each type of light with be inserted as an ABS Device represented as a simple circle or rectangle in plan, and in model views these will be extruded in 3D.

As ABS devices these can then be assigned to circuits and wired-up with loads set from the values used in DIALux.

The link automatically attaches the Devices-LightStyles property set to each device style all with the manufacturer and model information filled in. Simply insert a lighting fixture schedule.

Future directions
We ought to include windows in the export process We ought to be getting more information from DIALux about the lights. For example Voltage, Number of lamps, Mounting etc.. We could do with a more realistic 3D representation of the light from DIALux. Since lights are grouped together in DIALux control groups, these ought to be used to assign a circuit to the lights. With all this lighting information, this ought to be working with Viz Render for photo-realistic renderings. Also, since this works via a neutral file format this ought to be pretty straightforward to hook up with Revit.