Introduction
Thank you for your interest in ElumTools®, the most robust and accurate method of performing interior and exterior lighting calculations directly within Autodesk® Revit®. New in this release: ElumTools adds the ability to calculate Cylindrical Illuminance to the add calculation point commands. This places a new item in the Metrics menu on the toolbar and also in the Metrics section of each calculation point command dialog: Ez - Cylindrical Illuminance.
Also new is an optional check on calculation point spacing to ensure adequate density of coverage in accordance with British Standard BS EN12464-1_2011. This can be enabled from System Settings.
These features are available in the currently supported versions of ElumTools® : 2022, 2021 and 2020.
Introduced recently:
ElumTools now supports a "Direct light only" calculation mode. This was implemented to support various Emergency Lighting criteria that require the consideration of only direct light. The new direct light only capability can be utilized in General Use mode as well as desired. Why might you do this? Lighting designers value knowing the contribution of direct versus reflected light to a final solution. ElumTools has been able to show this in the Calculation Viewer for some time. Now you can actually put those numbers in your Revit views as well if appropriate. Last feature added to 2019 release.
ElumTools now has improved support for 4K monitors as well.
ElumTools calculation point commands will now synchronize the calculation point name with the Revit Room, Space, Area or Region name by default. You can change it in the dialog and have the option to re-synch at any time.
ElumTools recently introduced calculation point masking from the Add or Edit calculation point dialogs. During the same release cycle we also introduced "sticky" behavior for the Calculation Viewer (rendering). This saves your customizations in font, size, color, isolines, spatial maps, pseudocolor for each successive viewing.
ElumTools now has calculation point projection options to easily enable point placement on stairs, topography and other multi-level surfaces.
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.
Released subscription-based Single and Multi-user licensing system for 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 generations. The 2018, 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 2021, 2020 and 2019 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 followed by Calculated Results provides 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!