Today has seen the team behind the multi-award-winning software, The CEDIA Designer (formerly known as The Cinema Designer) launch The Lighting Designer (TLD), a new cloud-based design and specification tool for lighting design.
TLD allows designers and integrators to produce technically correct and compliant lighting designs in a matter of minutes, increasing business profitability and ultimately revolutionising the lighting design industry.
The only software to bring electrical design, lighting control systems and lighting fixture specification together, TLD enables professionals from different fields to create detailed technical designs and ensure a smooth collaborative approach on projects.
Guy Singleton, the man behind both TCD and TLD said: “The industry is seeing that end users are putting great emphasis on lighting design, meaning that this segment of the market provides a great opportunity for integrators.
“Knowing how long it takes to design a lighting scheme inspired me to develop TLD. I’ve been working on the software for three years and am now excited to launch it and see it change the way in which integrators work.”
Traditionally, lighting design requires input from designers, electrical contractors, M&E engineers and technology integrators. Lighting designers usually focus on fixtures, colour temperature and colour rendering indexes, while electrical contractors and M&E engineers understand the mathematics and the requirements for electrically correct and safe electrical systems. Technology integrators usually deal with lighting control systems, installation and specific lighting control systems.
TLD aims to pull all three disciplines together to have a single piece of software that covers every element of the lighting design process.
Users have two options when starting a new project; they can import their lighting system programmes or manually input the information into the software.
They can then work through an easy step-by-step process of selecting fixtures, drivers, and cable lengths. There is already a large catalogue of lighting fixtures within TLD’s software, however there is the opportunity for users to build their own library of fixtures by adding new fixtures.
Once all information has been entered, TLD then works out how many modules are required and the panel locations, and automatically designs CAD drawings.
The PDF output from TLD shows everything from load schedules to photometric data, specification cut sheet to CAD drawings, a bill of materials and much more. Pulling the manufacture information of the panels, ballasts, interfaces and modules, it creates a presentable document with full data and panel diagrams in only a few seconds.
The PDF can be shared with the lighting designer, electrical contractor and M&E engineer so that everyone working on the lighting project has access to the same information.
TLD also deals with interoperability and compatibility issues by eliminating the possibility of lighting design mistakes by specifying incompatible drivers and fixtures, incorrect IP ratings and inaccurate load calculations.