Thanks for all the advice on Ray Tracers and Sketchup.
FWIW
I finally settled roughly where I started with Maxwell. It's licensing
is a "freemium" model with relatively low resolution (800x600) and
limited quality iterations (but plenty good for my purposes). The
problems I had (and were documented) regarding the latest version of
Silverlight (5.x) not working correctly with it (at all? on OSX)
evaporated? I installed 4.x, got it working, then tripped over Netflix
whining (and insisting) about having 5.x. I thought when I let it
install 5.x I'd be hosed on Maxwell, but magically it worked fine. Too
subtle for me to untangle easily so I take it as a blessing for the moment.
The results are pretty good, I'm even *more* impressed with how well
SketchUp handles it's models now that I see them rendered this way.
My *real* goal was to implement the SMS (Simultaneous Multiple Surfaces)
method of reflective/refractive optics design (specifically for
non-imaging collectors), but the ray tracing is a good double-check to
show what the integrated effect is. The biggest problem is that it
seems impossible to convoluted to create *volumes* in SketchUp... so
refractive optics aren't happening... unless maybe I get the Pro version
(used to be $99, now is $499?!).
Is anyone else out there doing ad-hoc optical design of any sort? Have
any favorite tools for this? Most of what I find are either deprecated
(dead links to dead websites) or Winderz only or pricey without a trial
or free version to check out.
- Steve
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