Analysis Menu

When you save the ray history table to a file, additional data columns are included as shown in Table 6.6. The start ray number and the wavelength are given as header lines. The columns are as follows:

TABLE 6.6. Ray History Table Columns: These columns are available when the table is saved to a format outside of TracePro for post-processing.

	Ray Node	The ray starts with ray node 1 (at the source or grid) and the
		first ray-surface intersection is node 2, etc.
	Flux	Flux of the incident ray.
	OPL	The optical path length of the ray, cumulative from the source.
		This is the integral of the distance along the ray times the
		index of refraction.
	X Pos., Y Pos., Z	The X, Y, and Z coordinates where the ray struck the surface.
	Pos.
	X Vec., Y Vec., Z	Direction cosines of the departing ray.
	Vec.
	Type	Kind of ray node, for example, SpecRefl for specular reflection.
	Hist	Often blank. Any special type of the ray node, for example, TIR
		for total internal reflection—a totally internally reflected ray on
		the ray node would result in Type=SpecRefl and History=TIR.
	Object	Name of the object at the current ray node
	Surface	Name of the surface at the current ray node
	S0, S1, S2, S3	Components of the Stokes vector in the local coordinate
		system of the ray
	Deg Pol	Degree of polarization of the ray
	Ellipse Ratio	Ratio between the two axes of the polarization ellipse
	Xvec MajAxis,	X, Y, and Z coordinates of a vector pointing in the direction of
	Yvec MajAxis,	the major axis of the polarization ellipse
	Zvec MajAxis

Ray Sorting

Ray Sorting affects the display of rays in the model window and may be applied to plots and tables. To open the Ray Sorting dialog box, select Analysis|Ray Sorting. The default display of rays is All Rays, which displays all the branches of every ray traced. The display of rays is not altered until you click the Update button.

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FIGURE 6.33 - Ray Sorting Dialog

All the Sort Type options in the Ray Sorting dialog box, except All Rays, require you to select a surface before any sorting is done. Table 6.7 summarizes the choices in Sort Type.

TABLE 6.7. Summary of Sort Type choices in Ray Sorting dialog box

Sort Type	Meaning	Surface Selection
		Required?
All Rays	All rays are displayed.	No
Selected	Only rays hitting the selected surface are dis-	Yes
Surface	played.
Specular	Only rays hitting the selected surface that	Yes
	undergo only specular reflections or refractions
	along the way are displayed. Scattered rays
	are not displayed.
Single	Only rays hitting the selected surface that	Yes
Scatter	undergo exactly one scatter along the way are
	displayed.
Multiple	Only rays hitting the selected surface that	Yes
Scatter	undergo more than one scatter along the way
	are displayed.

The display of rays can also be sorted by source and by wavelength. The default selections are for all wavelengths to be displayed. When Fluorescence is included in the ray trace individual wavelengths are marked with Ex for Excitation and Em for Emission showing how the rays contribute to the simulation. See “Fluorescence Ray Trace” on page 3.15.

The percentage of starting rays to display can also be entered. This is useful when you have done a raytrace with many rays. In such a case, there can be so

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Analysis Menu

many rays that you cannot get any useful insight from the display. The default percentage to display is 100%.

The Flux Display Range option can be used to control which rays are displayed by the relative flux of the rays. The flux of each ray segment is divided by the starting flux of the ray. If the result is between teh Min and Max values, the ray segment will be displayed. The default is for all ray segments will be displayed. To modify the Flux Display Range settings, check the Flux Display box in the Ray Sorting dialog box. You can input values for the Flux Range to eliminate the display of rays outside of the selected range.

NOTE: Ray Sorting does not apply to Candela Plots nor 3D Irradiance Maps.

Ray Sorting Examples

A simple example using a model with two blocks, the As2S3 surface property and polychromatic Grid Raytrace is shown in Figure 6.34.

FIGURE 6.34 - Generic model showing scattering of rays on back surface of left block.

The irradiance map for the raytrace from Figure 6.34 for all rays and wavelengths is shown on the left side of Figure 6.35, and the right shows the map for all wavelengths but only Specular rays

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.

FIGURE 6.35 - TracePro Irradiance maps, All rays (left), Specular rays (right)

The Irradiance Map Ray Sorting dialog is shown in Figure 6.36. Note that the

Window to which the sort will be applied is displayed at the top of the dialog.

Irradiance Window will be affected

Display Specular Rays

FIGURE 6.36 - Ray Sorting dialog window.

The Incident Ray Table for the raytrace from Figure 6.34 shown in Figure 6.37 but with the Sort Type set to Single Scatter. You can see that the only Intercept type displayed is RandTran (Random Transmission) since a scattering surface precedes the selected surface and any Specular rays suppressed.

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