Light Tools and Code V, the names of many optical designers, with the help of these two softwares, all kinds of exquisite lighting fixtures illuminate our lives, microscopes, telescopes, etc. expand the human vision, backlight, projection The instrument is dedicated to our colorful world of images.
The founders of ORA, Light Tools and Code V, with her passion for innovation and passion, have worked hard for more than 40 years to promote the optical revolution worldwide. Constantly fulfilling the promise of “delivering the best products to customersâ€.
In this era of passion and innovation, the rapid development of China's optoelectronic industry has also created the rise of "Chinese design." In the process, we saw a familiar figure ORA (American Optical Research Associates), which entered the Chinese market through the Chinese agent Sha Yibo Design Systems Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., and quickly in many large companies and research institutions. Taking root, speeding up the pace of China's optical design industry to catch up with advanced technology in Europe and America.
On March 16th, as a portal for the optoelectronics industry, Optoelectronics News was invited by ORA and Shayibo to visit Mr. Bruce Irving, ORA's international sales manager, and Mr. Wang Bohua, general manager of Sha Yibo. They talked about the secrets of ORA's success, the superior performance of Light Tools and Code V, their expectations for the Chinese market and their determination and confidence in the Chinese optical industry.
The third scene of the interview scene is Mr. Bruce Irving, ORA International Sales Manager. Photo: Rao Chuhong Source: Optoelectronics News Network
Wang Bohua, General Manager of Sha Yibo Design Systems Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
About ORA: The world's largest supplier of optical design software, based in California, USA. Founded in 1963, the first software product was released in 1975. The company currently has 93 employees, 2/3 of whom have master's degrees or above, and have extensive experience in optical design and software development. Its Light Tools and Code V optical design software accounts for 85% of total revenue. There are international distributors in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
About Sha Yibo: Sha Yi Bo Design Systems Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (CCS) is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Cybernet Systems Co., Ltd., the world's largest CAE solution provider. Cybernet Systems has more than 20 years of experience in CAE technical services, with customers in the electronics, electromagnetic, mechanical, optoelectronic, thermodynamics, acoustics, fluid mechanics, nanotechnology, information technology and knowledge innovation industries. Cybernet has offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The company is a Chinese agent for ORA optical software products.
Interview record:
Strong R&D team's continuous innovation to create first-class optical software
Optoelectronic News Network: How did your company develop these two softwares? How are your R&D teams built up?
Bruce: ORA is a mature and stable company. We introduced Code V software in 1975 and LightTools in 1997. Currently 85% of the revenue comes from Code V and Light Tools.
In terms of R&D team, many of our software development engineers have doctoral and master's degrees, accounting for 2/3 of the total number of employees, and 60% of our employees are optical or software engineers. Most graduated in physics, optics, software or have experience in lighting design.
One of our engineers has 25 years of experience in optical optimization, and he used to be a developer of another company. The founder of our company is also an optical optimization engineer. These are the secrets of our success. In the grassroots stage of the company, we have a good technical foundation, and we have invested a lot of resources in technology.
Optoelectronic News Network: Is there any other development direction?
Bruce: Our other development direction is to develop an integrated CAD system, Solid Works software. Solid Works is a 3D module widely used in CAD systems. We have a dynamic connection between LightTools and Solid Works. It is much easier for designers to use 3D modules in LightTools after developing complex 3D modules.
Solid Works specializes in 3D design and does not support optics and lighting. LightTools is a more professional lighting design tool.
Superior simulation capabilities drive the dramatic development of optical design
Optoelectronic News Network: How do you guarantee the quality of the software?
Bruce: Code V and LightTools are very large and complex. The development of this software used a lot of manpower. We have adopted a standard software quality inspection process. Perform thousands of reliability and accuracy tests per week and verify their compatibility with new hardware to ensure customers are comfortable.
ORA has a special team dedicated to software quality control and a dedicated team to provide technical support. For other small companies, programmers usually have to do both technical support and training.
Optoelectronic News Network: What is the specific division of the two software? Will you develop a bigger product in the future?
Bruce: Light Tools focuses on lighting design and Code V is used in image optics. These two softwares have been widely used in lighting, backlighting, projectors, car lights and many other fields.
Optical design can be divided into two areas: lighting and imaging. A good example of a projector is to use a lens to adjust the image, but also to take care of the brightness of the screen. Brightness from the middle to every corner must be considered. So many projector developers in the world use LightTools and Code V at the same time.
We will continue to improve these two products and find more application areas. For example, LightTools, customers can purchase some optional modules according to their needs. There are no plans to add new products, and our focus is to serve the new and existing customers as much as possible.
Optoelectronic News Network: What are the challenges you face? How will the two softwares be improved in the future?
Bruce: In addition to the economic crisis and price issues, the biggest challenge we face is to make the products easy for engineers who are new to the market. We will provide Chinese interface products.
Due to the pursuit of conventional lighting, there is now an emerging field of white LED lighting that has been greatly developed, and many phosphor models have emerged. We have put a lot of effort into improving the simulation of phosphors. The initial light out of the LED is uneven, there is too much yellow light, we have made some improvements, they need a tool to design it. This is one of our development directions.
Another very important area is general lighting, which requires analysis to display data in a specific way. It is a little different from other industrial uses. So we have to develop new analytical tools to help regular lighting designers.
We often listen to voices from customers and distributors, and actively conduct surveys. We ask dealer customers what they say, what they are looking for, and we put these requirements on our software. Always follow the technology trend, what is the general needs of customers.
Optoelectronic News Network: How do you balance the primary and secondary light distribution?
Bruce: Take the street light as an example. The lens is a light distribution and the mirror is a secondary light distribution. LightTools can do both designs at the same time, and the best way is to design it at the same time. This way you can get more variables and a better solution. But that seems impossible. Because the company that makes the street light is not necessarily the company that makes the LED, the two are independently designed. One day they will realize that a lens and a street light must be designed together to create a better solution.
Next year, the government plans to install more than 100,000 street lights in four major cities in the country. How can manufacturers be cost effective? LightTools must be used, so that you can make a good solution, which is why many engineers attended the seminar.
Optoelectronic News Network: How do you do optical optimization work?
Bruce: When you design LED lights, you use LightTools, you should make sure that the light is in a specific area. You tell the software how much voltage and wavelength you want the light to go, and then the software will tell you what the result will be, which will save a lot of cost, which is the optimization we provide to the optical designer. Most of the time they get excited because they find a way to solve the problem. It’s not the way to find mistakes in the past. For example, they managed to adjust a projector, and the software correctly predicted where the light would go, which is a huge innovation.
For street lights, for example, light hits the sky and becomes light pollution. If you design correctly, you can shoot the light where you want it. You can use low LEDs to achieve low power and high efficiency.
Actively participate in the Chinese market
Optoelectronic News Network: What achievements have been made in the Chinese market?
Wang Bohua: Compared with Japan and South Korea, the Chinese market is still young. In the past few years, China has focused primarily on low-cost manufacturing. Starting to design your own products is something in recent years. In many cases, many research projects and universities have set up projects to design products and design projects. Now they realize that they need optical design tools. We have extensive contacts with research institutes, universities, and companies, especially joint ventures, research and development laboratories, and R&D centers of multinational companies. We brought the software to these companies.
Bruce: Thanks to the cooperation of CCS, they have contacted many commercial companies. We intend to add a Chinese interface to this software. Use the Chinese guide on the software. This is very important, although many engineers can accept the English interface, but the native language is better for them. On a global scale, many large companies are using our software.
Some people say that our price is high, but the price is only part of the business. If you can get better results with higher efficiency, you can avoid mistakes in production, your products will be trusted by customers. Then it is worth the price, and the return is greater than the investment.
Optoelectronic News Network: For LED lighting, projection, backlight and other markets, which is your biggest market?
Bruce: At present, backlight is the largest market, accounting for about 65%, because demand is strong, but for us, growth is not the fastest. The current growth is mainly reflected in LED design and conventional lighting, as well as in LED packaging, the package can also affect the distribution of light. So you can use LightTools to accurately distribute the light. Our software helps them distribute light correctly.
Code V and LightTools design examples
LightTools application interface
LightTools instance application interface
Dashboard LED light guide optimization results
Backlight optimization before and after comparison
(Reporter: Rao Chuhong, Yang Qiuni, Editor: Zeng Cong)
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