Study on photometric data visualization based on IESNA LM-63 standard

Abstract

The luminous intensity distribution (LID) data file is a written description of the spatial distribution characteristics of the light intensity emitted by light sources or luminaires, which is the prerequisite for the accurate lighting analysis e.g. point-by-point method. Firstly, this paper introduces the format and composition of LID file based on the widely used IESNA LM-63 standard at present. Then, three visualization methods are established to understand the luminaire in an intuitive way. The first one is the photometric curve, which is encoded and integrated into the self-developed lighting analysis software; the second one is the contour map obtained by the rectangular coordinate system in Surfer software through the data exchange file; the last one is the contour map in Origin software represented in the polar coordinate system. It is expected to provide a reference for lighting designers to develop their point-by-point calculation program.