Information sought on rtrace_dc_2305 program

radiance-daysim
1

Hello,

I am looking at https://github.com/MITSustainableDesignLab/Daysim, a fork of the RADIANCE mirror repository maintained by NREL (https://github.com/NREL/Radiance) which includes the source code for the DAYSIM suite.

The README says:

Programs maintained here that require manual intervention to compile (in src/rt):

  • rtrace_dc
  • rtrace_dc_2305

I am looking for information on rtrace_dc_2305. I will be asking them (the MIT Daysim project above) the following questions:

  • where is the source code for rtrace_dc_2305 (it doesn’t seem to exist in https://github.com/MITSustainableDesignLab/Daysim/tree/master/src/rt)
  • how do I build rtrace_dc_2305?
  • what manual intervention is required to build it?
  • I need to build it for Linux - Is that possible? Your web page says ‘Programs in this repository compile on Windows (VS2013) and Mac (XCode)’ Does that imply that it not possible to compile them on Linux? - I ask because I have a slightly modified copy of Daysim 4.0 which allows building for Linux, and when I build it, it produces an executable for rtrace_dc, but not one for rtrace_dc_2305 (just like your version, it does not contain source code for rtrace_dc_2305).

But I thought I’d also ask here because rtrace_dc is a copy of rtrace, a Radiance program, and because you have helped me in the past to build Radiance for Linux.

I am running Daysim’s gen_dc program with the -dds option and it is falling over because it cannot find rtrace_dc_2305: https://github.com/MITSustainableDesignLab/Daysim/blob/master/src/daysim/gen_dc.c#L625

  • Do you know anything about rtrace_dc_2305?
  • How does it relate to rtrace_dc or rtrace?
  • Does source code for it exist?
  • If not, is the idea that rtrace_dc_2305 can be manually created by modifying rtrace_dc or rtrace?

Any information you may have that could help me figure out how to provide rtrace_dc_2305 to gen_dc (on Linux), will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help,

Philip Schwarz

2

I’ve already replied to this on GitHub, but here on the Radiance forum, my first question would be why you even want to use rtrace_dc_2305. Unless you have a specific requirement to use that software, you will have a much easier time using rcontrib instead.

Nathaniel

3

Hello Nathaniel,

Thanks for getting back to me here and on Github.

my first question would be why you even want to use rtrace_dc_2305

I need to to call gen_dc with the -dds option. I have a colleague who installed Daysim on Windows and he can successfully do that. When I try to do that on Linux, I get the following

image
image.png1066×510 47.6 KB

My colleague can see rtrace_dc_2305.exe as part of the installation on Windows. I cannot find the source code for rtrace_dc_2305, nor can I find any documentation saying that generation of a rtrace_dc_2305 binary on Linux is optional, or that explains how to generate the binary.

If I can’t resolve the problem then I can’t use the -dds option on Linux!

It looks like the way daysim depends on rtrace_dc_2305 is that it generates a file, called static_system.dir-dir.ab0.dc, which contains the following command invoking rtrace_dc_2305:

# RADIANCE 4.1a; with Photon Map Extension 4.3.1, Daysim Extension
# /usr/local/bin/daysim-radiance/rtrace_dc_2305  -h -I+ -oc -aa 0.150000 -ab 0 -ad 256 -ar 32 -as 20 -dj 0.700000 -dr 0 -ds 0.000000

Do you have any further thoughts on how to get gen_dc -dds to work on Linux?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Philip

4

I’ve updated the CMake file and documentation on GitHub to explain how to compile rtrace_dc_2305 as well as I understand it. Use it at your own risk.

Nathaniel