Tracer

Tracer is a ray-tracing package for Python. It is geared toward solar energy research; written for extensibility and scriptability, it is particularly suitable for use together with optimization programs, but your imagination is the limit.

Tracer is free-software, distributed under the GPL v3.0 license. You are free to use, review the code or help improve it.

Screenshots

Example code is supplied with the package, take a look at the results!

Features

The package contains two parts: a set of modules for building and running ray tracing scenes; and a set of pre-assembled models.

The scene construction part provides:

Assemblies of arbitrary complexity
Surfaces with flat, spherical, cylindrical or paraboloidal shapes; API for developing other shapes.
Surface materials with specular-reflective or refractive surfaces; API for developing more complex models
Receiver surfaces for output collection.

The models included in the second part:

One-sided mirror
Rectangular kaleidoscope light-guide
Parabolic dishes with circular or hexagonal apertures.
Heliostat field (new in v0.2).
Spherical lens - any plano/convex/concave combination (new in v0.2).

Download

Tracer 0.2 is available from BerliOS

The latest code is stored in a Git repository: http://github.com/yosefm/tracer/

Develop

We gladly accept improvements, bug reports and fixes. Contributing your changes to the community will help you stay concurrent with new developments contributed by others, and get review and advice.

To reduce the load on the volunteer maintainer of the code, be sure to read the developer guidelines first.

Before reporting a bug, please read the bug-report guidelines.

Documentation and Resources

The user documentation section contains a tutorial, usage instructions and reference material for the package.

If you have questions, or want to get involved in development, please use our mailing list, tracer-user (or search its archives).