Introduction

Thank you for your interest in ElumTools, the easiest and most accurate method of performing interior and exterior lighting calculations directly within Autodesk® Revit®. New for this release are calculation point projection options to easily enable point placement on stairs, topography and other multi-level surfaces. This latest release is for ElumTools 2020, 2019 and 2018.

 

Introduced recently:

 

ElumTools is now suitable for horticultural lighting! The new Horticulture calculation mode for the computation of photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) specific to plant growth. The new Horticulture mode functions in the same way as the other ElumTools calculation modes (General, Emergency, Daylight). ElumTools helpful Layout Assistant can also operate in terms of the PPFD calculation metric when in Horticulture mode. A complete list of changes can be found here.

 

Subscription-based Single and Multi-user licensing system for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 generations. The 2017 and 2016 versions have since been removed from the current maintenance schedule. Subscription has some very positive changes for network license users as the old local server license administration software can now be replaced with multi-user subscription in the cloud. This allows users to work form anywhere there is an Internet connection.

 

Introduced in previous releases are new features for Material Mapping and Calculation flexibility, Isolines and Spatial Maps as well as a new exterior pole mounted luminaire family. Isolines and Spatial Maps are excellent graphical methods of evaluating gradients of light. Isolines are at this time restricted to the ElumTools calculation viewer and cannot be enabled in your Revit views. This is a limitation of the Autodesk visualization framework. Spatial maps can be enabled in both your Revit views and the ElumTools calculation viewer. The ElumTools view allows different spatial map scales and colors for individual calculations and viewer instances while your Revit views will utilize a single scale dictated by the absolute maximum illuminance in the overall view.

 

Dramatic new capability to use 3D views to sort the portions of your model you wish to compute: you can now compute the Active view, or compute any number of separate 3D views using the Calculate Multiple Views command. This paves the way for another new command, Create Daylight Views which will allow you to stratify your model into interior and exterior geometry thereby solving the old problem of exterior geometry in daylight calculations.

 

This latest release of ElumTools is functionally identical across the 2020, 2019 and 2018 generations. This allows you to work on Revit projects in any of these product versions with the same ElumTools capabilities.

 

 

Learning ElumTools

If you are new to ElumTools and beginning with a trip through this help compilation, you are in the right place. While ElumTools is very intuitive in many ways, there are also some vital steps required to ensure success. For the easiest ascent of the learning curve, we recommend the following help topics and resources.

 

• ElumTools learning online! You can also find this resource in the ElumTools Help menu. This is the BEST place to start.
• Getting Started with ElumTools is a basic overview of the steps required to be productive.
• The ElumTools Videos are a fast and easy way to get the basics. This is a dynamic collection that can be found on Lighting Analysts YouTube channel.
• The program Settings will help you set some defaults. You may want to simply return here once you get your feet wet.
• If you use "Linked Models" read this.
• Dig into Using ElumTools, the path to productivity is clearly outlined.

 

Finally, do not hesitate to experiment and test the boundaries. If you have ideas on how we can improve ElumTools, please contact us by submitting a ticket or by email at support@elumtools.com.

 

We appreciate the opportunity to assist in your success!