Lighting Reality offers real-time design software

Exterior lighting design software from Lighting Reality has enabled Cheshire East Council to provide exterior lighting schemes.

Cheshire East Council, previously a part of Cheshire County Council, benefited from the speed and ease of use of the design software.

This enabled the unitary authority to produce 20-30 lighting schemes a month during the recent UK housing boom.

Neil Heller, principal lighting engineer, for Cheshire East Council, explained: "In the time before we used Reality even simple exterior lighting designs would take up a whole day".

"This situation improved with the manufacturer-specific software packages that were subsequently introduced; however, the solus nature of these packages meant that we could not always choose the best lighting equipment to suit specific projects".

"Reality is fast and easy to use, our productivity in producing schemes has improved immeasurably".

The fast project turnarounds achieved by Cheshire East Council are a direct result of the real-time operation of Reality software.

With most lighting design programs, the designer positions his columns and lanterns, and then calculates what lighting level will be achieved as a result.

Reality works in real-time, so as the geometry of the columns and the lanterns is altered, the program calculates the new lighting level automatically.

The designer is able to quickly redesign the system using another manufacturer's equipment - and the same project file - and Reality then recalculates the resultant lighting level.

Neil Heller continued: "When we first started with Reality, we found that we could use the software - literally straight out of the box".

"Reality is self-explanatory, and so we were productive from day one".

"We did, however, invest in some training, in order to get to know the limits of what we could achieve with the program".

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