Synopsys, Inc. is pursuing its expansion into non-traditional EDA markets. These markets are all related to EDA in the sense that they address systems that contain electronic components built using traditional EDA tools. The corporation shows to be very focused to provide system solutions to its customers that span design, development and production of complete systems.

The latest step is the announcement of the availability of enhancements to its LightTools® illumination design and analysis software, acquired as part of Synopsys' acquisition of Optical Research Associates (ORA®) in October of 2010. LightTools 7.2 delivers features that will help users graphically analyze simulation results, compute metrics when designing for the lighting industry, iteratively design with CAD software and improve the efficiency of luminaire and solar designs. These capabilities enable lighting designers to more easily explore design alternatives, study light behavior and improve product quality early in the design process.

New Functionality
The LightTools LumViewer, an interactive charting capability, has been enhanced with a new look and many additional features to customize illumination simulation results to meet personal, company or industry standards. Users can rotate and zoom 3D charts, change fonts and colors, view data on a logarithmic scale and make many other customizations as needed. Users can also save charting customizations in a template to reload for later use, or to set as a default for all LightTools charts.

The simulation output now includes detailed beam statistics to provide lighting designers with access to beam and field width information for analysis and optimization. These statistics are useful for determining the angular or spatial spread of a beam pattern generated by an optical system, such as a luminaire. Designers also have the ability to automatically optimize the optical system to match a specified beam spread.

With the new CAD file element, LightTools entities can be associated with an externally created CAD file, enabling users to update geometry with the click of a button without losing optical properties, names or relations with other elements of the LightTools model. CATIA, IGES, SAT and STEP formats are accepted. This capability simplifies the process of using CAD geometry in LightTools and ensures data integrity throughout design iterations.

3D compound parabolic concentrators (CPCs) and CPC reflectors are now available as native elements in LightTools. The CPC objects are useful in luminaire and solar design for collimating light from a source or concentrating light onto a receiver. The elements are fully optimizable; for example, users can automatically optimize a CPC's size and angle to match a target illumination distribution, intensity, total power or flux on a receiver.

The LightTools 7.2 release is available now and can be obtained by emailing info@opticalres.com.