NSC: Surface as a Detector vs. Polygon Object as a Detector

  • 2 June 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 178 views

I just created a toroidal surface, type detector. The raytrace analysis nicely displays the irradiance as false colors in the 3D shaded model view. 'Detector Tools - Save Detector Data' does allow to select the detector, but without extension, no file created. This can be expected from the documentation, but may be altered for convenience (only supported detctors may be allowed to select).


Earlier, I created a polygon object, type detector. Again, the 3D shaded model displays the irradiance in false colors. I then created a detector viewer; the Graph display being empty. However, the data of every tesselated triangle pixel is displayed in the Text display.


The same procedure does not work with the toroidal surface. The detector is simply not listed in 'Detector Viewer - Settings - Detector'.


The difference between both cases is that the second case contains only one detector (the polygon object), whereas the first case contains four detectors, one of which is the toroidal surface.



  1. What's the difference between a surface as a detector and a polygon object as a detector, I mean in view of the detector viewer?

  2. Can I somehow get access to the surface detector irradiance data?


1 reply

Userlevel 3
Badge +1

Hi Christian,


Normally, they should behave the same way, and there are notes in the help file says 'Most objects may act like a detector. This includes objects with flat faces, such as the polygon, STL, and rectangular volume objects.Once the object is set to be a detector, the intensity detected will be displayed on the Shaded Model display, and on the text listing of the Detector Viewer window. The color scheme the detector will display on the Shaded Model may also be selected on the Object Properties dialog box. By default the color chosen represent the Irradiance but may also represent the total Flux.'


So by definition, surface can also be selected in the detector, but you have to switch it to text first, as shown in the example below.Literally I'm not too sure what's wrong with your surface as detector, if it still doesn't display. Can you please attach the file for us to check?


Please let us know if you have any other questions! Thanks~

Best Regards

Sean Lin

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