Right now, I’m working on a project that includes modelling intricate daylighting systems for a sizable commercial structure, such light shelves, prismatic glazing, and dynamic shading devices. Although I’ve been using Radiance for a while, this project is forcing me to investigate more sophisticated modelling approaches and tactics in order to guarantee precise and trustworthy outcomes.
I’m really want to know what the best practices are for:
Modelling Complex Geometry: How should detailed geometry of complex daylighting devices be created and imported into Radiance? Exist any plugins or tools that can make this process more efficient?
Material Definitions: How should I go about describing materials for these intricate systems, particularly for components like high-performance coatings that have distinctive effects on light? Or prismatic glazing? Any advice on how to make sure the simulation appropriately depicts the material properties?
Simulation Parameters: When working with intricate daylighting scenarios, what are the most important parameters or variables that need to be changed to strike a balance between simulation time and accuracy? In what way do you usually optimise these parameters?
Validation and Verification: How are your Radiance models for these systems validated? Are there any particular methods or measurements that are especially helpful in guaranteeing the accuracy of the simulation results?
Any advice, information, or examples that could help me along this process would be highly appreciated. It would be really beneficial if someone could direct me to pertinent case studies or has expertise working on projects similar to mine google cloud platform.
Sorry for the slow response – we had the Radiance workshop in SLC, followed by a week-long vacation for me.
For complex geometry, you can save memory by using instances or Radiance triangle meshes if the geometry repeats. Check out the obj2mesh tool, the “instance” and “mesh” primitives, and the replmarks program, which can be combined with xform -a and/or the rcalc program to place objects. For more interactive CAD tools, you will need to ask someone who uses those. There are plenty of experts on this forum, so maybe they’ll offer some tips.
Materials are always a challenge. There are some tools for coated glazings, like the “glaze” script (which only works on Unix, currently). There are the “prism” and “prism2” types that can work for certain prismatic systems, and more general BSDF types that can be computed using genBSDF or created from measurements.
There is no general guide to simulation parameters, and a lot depends on the type of simulation you are doing. Generally speaking, the -ab and -ad parameters are most important for daylight, but how you set them depends a lot on whether you are doing an annual calculation or point-in-time.
Regarding validation, people generally make sure each step in the calculation is valid by doing convergence studies or comparisons to measurements, the latter being preferred when feasible.
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Exist any plugins or tools that can make this process more efficient? 
in advance.