KEREN

KEREN NTM CAD/CAM.  NEW OFFERED FOR SALE .

ONLY BY KEREN™: 

• Modeling of most complex scenes with over 1,000,000 polygons.
• Ray Tracing Speed of 250,000-500,000 intersections/s for simple Scenes with thousands of polygons to 150,000-300,000 for scenes with over 1,000,000 polygons.
• 0.5 – 5 minutes for 1% accuracy results for most complex scenes.
• Photorealistic imaging (apparent luminance) in a single run for a complete sphere of viewing angles. That is scene apparent luminance is available at any angle of observation and distance to observer.  
• Special modules for automatical  construction by a single key stroke of complex “primitives” such as realistic Backlight Units with actual extractors of any shape and number
• Unique fully automatic iterative “synthesis” modules of KEREN™ automatically perform complex design of optimized systems in a batch mode:

• Patented Optimal Extractor Distribution for BLU, which cannot be obtained manually.
• Symmetric and most complex  asymmetric reflectors and lenses with sculptured Intensity distribution.

• Post Processing. Special Modules to convert Extractor population distributions to GERBER, DXF and other special formats used by industry to produce mass production masters by photolithographic, EB, laser etching,  precision diamond turning and other microreplication processes. 

KEREN™ is a unique CAD/CAM package for the design, performance analysis and manufacture of non-imaging optical systems. Since its inception in 1987 it has been in use by a number of the leading industrial companies and proved to be instrumental in the design of superior high-tech products ranging from reflectors for the luminaires to optical components in optical communication, LED, laser, projection, solar, machine vision, flat panel display and other photonics and electro-optical systems designed to produce a specified Light Intensity or Luminance Distribution. KEREN™ is also a powerful tool for simulating the radiation transfer and performing a complete radiometric analysis for systems with realistic extended sources of light (SoL), arbitrary geometrical shape and realistic optical parameters, which are encountered in various scientific and applied problems.

With a continuing record of over twenty years KEREN™ is the first industrial program to employ Monte Carlo forward ray tracing technique to extend the capabilities of ubiquitous optical software packages to a realm of imaging and non-imaging systems with complex radiation transfer mechanism.

The software has been originally developed under contracts from the leading lighting system makers and incorporate user friendly special modules optimized to provide fast solutions to production floor problems, photometry etc. It met the stringent industrial specifications, in particular, accurate simulation and synthesis of complex systems, high speed and user friendliness.

In our relentless effort to expand the application domains of the package we are constantly adding new capabilities. KEREN™ new version 2.5 is now a universal tool for a complete radiometric analysis of virtually any type of optical system.

This is the only technique, which makes no simplifying assumptions about a simulated system of any complexity and produces error free results. A combination of a high performance ray tracer and special variance reduction algorithms produce extremely accurate results in record time outperforming other programs by orders of magnitude.

MODULAR STRUCTURE. KEREN™ has two distinct Computational Engines:

• FOVEA (Finite Optical Vector Element Analyzer) for an analysis, i.e. prediction of a photometric performance, of single-reflection systems, such as reflectors for luminaires, projection systems, vehicle headlights, some types of solar concentrators etc. It is near real-time and has special outputs to visualize an action of every finite reflector element, total flashed area of the system etc., which are highly useful for a designer. Monte Carlo approach does not enable to produce this information.
• FRAME (Forward Ray Tracing Monte Carlo Engine) for an analysis of optical systems having any configuration of multiple planar and volumetric sources, reflecting, refracting, diffusing and scattering elements. Such systems are characterized by a presence of multiple interreflections, polarization, chromatic aberrations, stray light, TIR (total internal reflection) etc.

In addition to the computational modules KEREN™ features over a dozen of stand-alone modules for the synthesis, i.e. automatic design, of particular types of systems, such as:

• Backlights for LCDs
• Light Guiding Panels for BLU, signage, embedded logo etc with Multiple Directional Extractor Arrays (MDEA) – specially shaped micro machined optics (MMO) producing significantly enhanced backlight luminance.
• Analysis and design of novel Brightness Enhancement Films (BEF), diffusing, reflecting, polarizing and luminance equalizing optical films.
• Fiber Optics Lighting Systems
• LED powered Lighting Systems
• LED chip analysis and design for a maximal extraction efficiency *
• Generation of rough surfaces with controlled scattering, reflection and  extraction parameters *
• Generation of volume scattering elements with controlled scattering  parameters*
• Asymmetric reflectors for car headlights & street lighting and other applications – KEREN™ are the only existing program synthesizing these know-how intensive reflectors.
• Asymmetric lenses with accurate beam shape definition for lighting, signaling, optical sensing.
• Optimized Reflectors for projection systems.
• Reflectors for miniature Spotlights and sealed beam lamps.
• Two-dimensional Optical Systems – trough reflectors for tubular fluorescent lamps etc.
• Reflectors for fluorescent lamps.

* Currently is not offered for sale

AUTOMATIC ITERATIVE MODULES. A design of some imaging and all, even most simple, non imaging systems with real extended sources is an inherently iterative process. Starting from the first solution for a point-like source a final optimal solution is synthesized through a number of successive intermediate solutions. This is a most tedious, time consuming part of the design cycle, as it involves manual manipulation of data. It also requires a lot of experience on the part of the user to make intelligent guesses, as he proceeds in trial-and-error steps. This is especially relevant for backlight design, since the density distribution of light extracting arrays producing uniform luminance can only be found in an iterative cycle.  Unique iterative “synthesis” modules of KEREN™ automatically perform exactly those tasks in a batch mode. The cycle starts with a first solution and automatically proceeds to an optimal solution, which is usually better than that one, which can be obtained manually. The iterative algorithms are highly effective and, on many occasions do not even require a good first “guess” solution. For example, for a specified narrow beam one can obtain a parabolic reflector starting from a spherical initial shape. Or it can transform an axially symmetric reflector into an asymmetric reflector with a rectangular beam shape optimized for projection, vehicles etc. lighting systems. Automatic synthesis is indispensable and especially effective for such devices as LCD backlights, which have analytically untraceable radiation transfer mechanism. It enables to produce devices with highest power efficiency and uniformity, not attainable by other methods.

NEW FEATURES.

3-D MODELING. KEREN™ is now a stand-alone program. It has its own "mini" 3-D solid modeler, which is extremely simple in use and allows a direct input of the system (SCENE) geometry as a text file of the XYZ vertex coordinates. It also performs a manipulation of the objects in space and other frequently used operations. A simple data format of the poly-lines (so called B-Rep) enables an inexperienced user to input a system of any geometry within minutes. In addition KEREN™ - DXF/IGES import/export options provide a complete two-way interface between the program and any external 3D modeler. That is a scene can be constructed within any modeler and then converted into KEREN™ format and vice versa. KEREN™ also has a complete interface with advanced 3D solid modelers, ACAD etc. A scene can be of any complexity and contain an unrestricted number of optical components modeled by finite elements (polygons).  In addition to the planar polygons surfaces can be represented by cubic spline patches. Spline use greatly reduces a number of surface vertexes required to assure a desired ray tracing accuracy.

OPTICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MATERIALS. Scene objects are classified into several optical types: Sources of Light (SoL), Reflectors, Refractors, Diffusers and 3D volume scattering elements. Each type is assigned a complete list of its relevant optical characteristics based on the real, measured directional emittance, reflectance and transmittance data described by Bidirectional Distribution Functions, or BEDF/BRDF/BTDF. The material library can be easily extended to include new materials. Thus, SoL is assigned the radiant flux, surface dependent luminance and its relative spatial distribution, BEDF, spectral power distribution, polarization index. Reflectors are specified by their BRDF. Refractors are assigned the refractive and absorption wavelength dependent indexes etc.
Unique “COMPOSITE”, “VIRTUAL” and “Optical Voxel” materials enable to model most complex optical scenes with exotic materials and millions of finite elements by a single key stroke. Imagine for example a suspension of phosphor powder in a dielectric medium, various dielectrics partly coated by a different material, medium with diffusing or refracting nano partices are just few examples.

PERFORMANCE. Reflector synthesis is near real time. A generation of a complete photometric report for a typical specular reflector takes seconds. For multi-component systems having significant multiple interreflections a universal Monte Carlo ray tracing approach is used. In this case an execution time depends on the acceptable estimation error and can vary from few seconds to a few minutes for the most complex systems and a better than 5 percent accuracy.  However, also in this case the overall system parameters such as efficiency, total reflected/absorbed fluxes etc. are obtained within several seconds. The Monte Carlo technique also allows for a distributed computation, i.e. a parallel processing on several computers brings a corresponding reduction of the computation time. The results gracefully converge in time to their accurate values and the data obtained in a number of short independent simulations can be merged to increase the accuracy. Such high performance is a result of a very fast ray tracing (200,000 – 400,000 intersections per second) and proprietary variance reduction methods, which drastically reduce a number of rays required to obtain a given estimate accuracy.

HARDWARE. Pentium  based PCs

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