Let us help answer the most common questions you might have.
If you already use Solidworks, you'll likely want to use our Solidworks add-in.
If you don't have Solidworks, you'll likely use our Rhino add-in. You can purchase Rhino along with Photopia if you don't already have a copy.
A User license gives a named user access to Photopia on any computer they work on. User licenses cannot be shared with other users and only allow Photopia to be open on one computer at a time.
The Photopia Materials Library contains measured optical properties for a wide range of commonly used materials, allowing you to just pick a material from the list. Other raytracing software may not have a library of data and require you to put in confusing parameters to guess at a materials behavior.
Photopia Reports Premium gives you the ability to export high resolution and vector based files. Premium also allows you to view custom reports for specific industries, like a DLC Report or FAA Report. Premium also gives you one sharable license to use outside of Photopia.
The raytrace engine can use as many cores as your computer has, as long as all of those cores are on the same NUMA node.
To use Photopia inside of SOLIDWORKS, you'll need a license of SOLIDWORKS.
To use Photopia inside of Rhino, you'll need a license of Rhino. If you don't already own a seat of Rhino, we can bundle that with your Photopia purchase.
The Regional WAN license is a concurrent user license that can be shared among many users in a specified region (Western Europe for example). To share among multiple regions (Western Europe and North America for example), a Regional WAN license can be upgraded to Dual Region or Global WAN license.
The Refractor Module is necessary to trace rays thru geometry that refracts light. A few examples are a prismatic lens, a TIR collimator, a freeform roadway lens or a convex-convex imagaing lens.
Fluence (and Fluence Rate) is commonly used in applications where particles are being irradiated, like UVC disinfection.
We have a Rhino and Solidworks tutorial for computing fluence in air duct applications.
The Material Lab allows you to generate a complete set of BSDF data using a geometric model of a surface texture. This makes it easy to apply complicated surfaces to large regions of an optic without the model being overly complex.
"The speed of your responses and the thoughtfulness of your explanations has gone a long way towards helping me to better understand the workings of Photopia. Your dedication to customer service stands as an example that others should follow. Please extend my thanks to all.”
“I've been a fan of Photopia for several years. It provides me with useful results within minutes which allows me to look at many design iterations in a short amount of time. I find it invaluable for refractors which are nearly impossible to prototype.”