LuxTools

LuxTools

Lighting checks inside Revit, and a two-way road to DIALux. LuxTools reads your rooms, light fixtures and windows, calculates artificial light, emergency lighting and daylight — and street lighting for roads — and tells you room by room whether the design meets the standard. The results come back into Revit as a colour plan on the floor plan and as values on each room that you can schedule, tag and filter. When the lighting design is done in DIALux, LuxTools sends the rooms and luminaires across and brings the finished layout back as real Revit light fixtures.

When to use it

• Checking a lighting layout against EN 12464-1 (or the North American IES tables) before it goes to the client: average light level, uniformity, glare, cylindrical light and power per square metre, with a pass or fail for every room.
• Emergency lighting to EN 1838 — open areas, escape routes and high-risk task areas — with every emergency fitting at its emergency output.
• Daylight studies: the daylight factor, a chosen sky and sun at a date and time, or a whole year from a weather file.
• Street and car-park lighting to EN 13201.
• Working with a lighting designer who uses DIALux: send them the rooms and luminaires, and get their layout back in the model without redrawing it.

How to use

1. Open LuxTools from BimCode's plugin list inside Revit. The top of the left rail shows the open project.
2. Read the model. On Overview, choose which rooms to read — the whole model, the level of the current view, what is visible, or what is selected — and press Read model. It takes a few seconds and changes nothing.
3. Check the luminaires. Every fixture type needs its photometric file (IES or LDT). Types without one are flagged; load a file for the whole type, or add the folder where your files live on the Settings page.
4. Check the rooms. Reflectances come from the room finishes, the work plane is 0.8 m, and each room is matched to a requirement from its name — an office gets 500 lux. Change any of it, one room at a time or several at once.
5. Calculate. On Artificial light, tick rooms (or leave them all), choose a calculation method and press Calculate. Read the colour plan and the pass/fail table. Show in Revit paints the result on the floor plan; Write to rooms puts the numbers on the rooms.
6. Deliver. On Reports, write the report (it opens in any browser and prints to PDF) or the grid values as a spreadsheet file.

The screens

• Overview — what is in the model, what was read, what is missing, and the next steps.
• Rooms — reflectances, work plane, wall zone, maintenance factor and the requirement each room is checked against.
• Luminaires — every fixture type and fixture, its photometric file and light distribution, and which ones are emergency fittings.
• Artificial light — the calculation, the colour plan and the checks, room by room.
• Emergency — EN 1838 checks for open areas, escape routes (picked in Revit or drawn on the plan) and high-risk task areas.
• Daylight — daylight factor, sky and sun at a moment, or a whole year.
• Road & outdoor — EN 13201 street lighting between two poles.
• To DIALux — the files DIALux reads, each with its purpose said plainly.
• From DIALux — open what DIALux wrote, match its luminaires to your Revit types, and place them.
• Reports — the printable report, the grid values, and the results written onto the rooms.
• Settings — every choice, saved, and shareable as a setup file.
• Help — the manual, the standards tables and a self test.

Working with DIALux

To DIALux

• STF — room outlines, heights, work planes, reflectances and every luminaire position. The free DIALux evo imports it; luminaires arrive as placeholders to swap for catalogue products. One file per level, because DIALux evo's STF import has no storeys.
• IFC 2x3 — the whole building from Revit's own IFC export, for DIALux Pro: storeys, rooms and luminaire placeholders.
• Luminaire drawing (DXF) — room outlines and one block per luminaire type, for DIALux's "assign a luminaire to each block" import, with a plan drawing of the current view alongside as an underlay.
• Photometry pack — every IES and LDT file the model uses in one folder, each with a copy in the other format, so the luminaires travel with the model.
• Luminaire list (CSV) — each fixture's type, article number, position, rotation, light output and power.

From DIALux

• Opens DIALux's IFC lighting export, a DWG or DXF drawing, an STF file or the luminaire list (CSV or Excel).
• Each DIALux luminaire — by article number, block or layer — is matched once to a Revit light fixture type. Suggestions come from the names; your choices are remembered for the next import.
• Fixtures are placed as real families at the imported position and rotation. Importing the same design again moves them instead of placing them twice.

Good to know

• Reading and calculating change nothing in Revit. Only Show in Revit (and Clear), Write to rooms, Add the result parameters and Place (on From DIALux) change the model, and each is a single undo step.
• Results you can schedule. Results are written into LUX_ shared parameters on rooms, spaces and light fixtures. They are the same on every computer, so schedules, tags and view filters work across projects, and Pass/Fail colour filters show failing rooms in red on the plan.
• Where files go. Exports go to Documents\LuxTools until you choose another folder on the To DIALux or Settings page.
• A missing photometric file is not a dead end. The fixture is calculated with an even stand-in at its rated output, and the screens say so until you give it the real file.
• Radiance. If the free Radiance program is installed, LuxTools can run it for a room; otherwise it writes the scene for someone else to run.
• Setups travel. Save your choices as a named setup and load it in the next project, or send the file to a colleague. Luminaire matches from DIALux imports travel with it.
• Runs on Revit 2025, 2026 and 2027.

DIALux is a trademark of DIAL GmbH. LuxTools reads and writes the files DIALux uses; it is not made, affiliated with or endorsed by DIAL.