Autodesk LIGHTSCAPE, Manual

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6
Refining Geometry
How to work with layers,
blocks, and surfaces.
Use layers and blocks to organize the geometry in your model. You can also add
and position new blocks and surfaces in your model.
Summary
In this chapter, you learn about:
• Working with layers
• Working with blocks
• Modifying blocks
• Working with block instances
• Working with surfaces.
About Refining Geometry
In general, Lightscape is not a modeling tool, but it
does provide you with a number of specific
modeling features that are useful for refining geom-
etry in an imported model. It also provides you with
tools for adding and positioning objects and lumi-
naires within a model.
Because the structure of the model changes when
you start the radiosity processing, the types of
modeling operations you may undertake differ from
the Preparation to the Solution stage.
Preparation Model Structure
When you import your model into a Lightscape
Preparation file, your model consists of surfaces,
blocks, and layers. You can store blocks and lumi-
naires in libraries and import them into your
models. Lightscape includes an extensive set of
libraries of blocks, luminaires, and materials that
you can use.
• A surface is any regular planar triangle or convex
quadrilateral. You assign materials and other at-
tributes to surfaces.
• A block is a group of entities (surfaces and/or other
blocks) that has a specific name and an insertion
(origin) point. A block can be inserted, or
instanced ,
repeatedly in the model in various positions and ori-
entations. All instances of a block, however, refer to