Many of North America 's most prominent manufacturers provide up to date catalogs of their photometric data specifically formatted for use with AGi32 and Photometric Toolbox. Manufacturers from Australia , New Zealand , the Pacific Rim and Europe are also beginning to participate as this free system is being recognized as a valuable forum for their product data.
Lighting Analysts maintains a separate web server controlling manufacturer access and user subscriptions to the photometric library. End users of AGi32 and Photometric Toolbox have immediate access to available photometric data through the Instabase system. With just a few mouse clicks you can be browsing the available manufacturers, downloading the data and using it in the software. The installation is completely automated. For manufacturers you use often, you can elect to Subscribe to their photometric information and receive automatic notification when an update has been posted.
The Instabase selection system
Once the photometric data is downloaded, a list of manufacturers is provided from a pull-down menu at the top of the Instabase dialog. Select the manufacturer of choice and a photometric directory tree is displayed. The directory tree is expanded and contracted by using the + and - signs on each branch. Navigate to a file of interest, click on it once to display its photometric description and a photograph if present. Polar graphs of intensity can be examined as well as the LCS lumen tabulation.
A typical manufacturers Instabase
InstaBase also has a powerful query utility to search for files matching a particular set of criteria. Suppose you are looking for a particular luminaire, such as a bollard, or a certain lamp wattage. You can query the InstaBase based on IESNA keywords contained in the photometric files. Especially powerful for exterior site lighting projects is the ability to search across multiple manufacturers for luminaires meeting specific LCS criteria (BUG Rating).
NOTE: As of this printing, not all manufacturers have updated
their photometric files to the IESNA95 standard. Earlier versions of the IES
format did not require keywords. IES files that lack keywords will participate in the Run Query search for Classification metrics but not in Keyword searches. |
