FRED Development Download

To download the latest development version of FRED, 25.110.0, please select the option below.  Note that ALL licenses are eligible to run the 64-bit version of FRED.  An email will be automatically sent to you with the download information. If for some reason, you do not find the email in your inbox, please check your spam filter or bulk email folder.

Important Notice Regarding Developmental Test Releases

Photon Engineering makes developmental test versions of the FRED Optical Engineering Software available to users on an occasional basis. Users under a current annual support contract can have early access to the newest features and the latest bug fixes. In return, we ask for your feedback regarding the new feature implementations and any potential bugs.

As with any software product under development, please be aware of the following:

• It is important to consider the issue of FRED file version compatibility. FRED model files are fully backward compatible, but they are not forward compatible. For example, FRED files created with earlier versions can be read by FRED version 25.110.0, but files created by version 25.110.0 can not be read by prior releases.

• This development version release falls under Photon Engineering’s FRED End User License Agreement section 4,” Limited Warranty”.

• Before downloading you should verify that your current software authorization codes will allow you to run the development version.  To do this, launch your current version of FRED and go to Menu > Help > License Authorization.  If the version limit reported in the License Authorization dialog matches or exceeds the development version number you want to download, then you will be able to run the development version.

Note: You may observe that after downloading and running the FRED installer, Windows presents the following dialog.  If you see this warning:

1. If your version shows an option to display “More info”, please click on that link.  You will then be presented with an option to run the installer file.

2. If your version of this dialog does not show an option to display “More info”, please take the following steps:

   1. Right mouse click on the FRED installation executable and choose “Properties”.

   2. On the General tab of the resulting dialog, look for an option in the lower right that says “Unblock”.  Toggle this option.

   3. Close the properties dialog and then run the FRED installer executable again.

Release Notes are included with your FRED installation and can be found by navigating to Help > Release Notes from the menu.

New Items in this Development Release

The following new items and bug fixes are included in this developmental release version:

New CAD Import (Preview Feature)

Newer CAD libraries were added to FRED v25.50 to facilitate CAD import. We offer our thanks to the FRED users that tested this new feature and provided feedback and files for investigation. Whilst the new CAD import has seen numerous improvements and fixes since v25.50, in this release (v25.110), the new CAD import is still considered to be a preview feature.

Notable usability enhancements include:

• CAD importer now also handles OBJ and STP files

• Several bug fixes (see release notes)

Note that it is possible to revert to the legacy CAD import at any time by selecting the “Use Legacy CAD Import” option in Tools... Preferences... Miscellaneous. Also note that you do not need to restart FRED for this change to take effect. CAD Export is currently unaffected by this change and will be addressed at a later date.

About Preview Features

Preview features are an early look at new functionality being added to FRED and are shared ahead of completion for the following reasons:

• To solicit feedback from users on a feature whilst it is being developed

• To help test a larger change over a longer amount of time in a wider array of use cases

Preview features are, by definition, unfinished. We know we still have work to do but we release them in preview form because we believe that they are useful even in their unfinished state.

Please share your feedback on these features via fredsupport@photonengr.com.

General Updates

• Added Forbes Q2D Freeform surface and associated script commands

• Added Chebyshev Freeform surface and associated script commands

• Users can now specify/modify the list of angles of incidence for pre-calculating TIS values for all scatter types.

• Added file export support in the user interface for Diffuse Binomial and Diffuse Polynomial scatter data

• The data for the SUPRAX glass by Auer Lighting has been updated and is available in the FRED Custom glass catalog.

• Added special quasi-random generator, SOBOL, support for many of the algorithms in FRED that require sequences of random numbers. This random number generator's quasi-random sequences often result in faster convergence of many iterative algorithms, which allows the user to trace fewer rays to achieve a desired level of convergence, or trace the same number of rays to achieve a higher level of convergence.

• Added script commands that implement the same IES output file calculation as the "Generate IES Output" dialog

• Implemented a user-settable coherence length for coherent sources

Miscellaneous Updates and Bug Fixes 

In addition to the improvements described above, this release contains several smaller features and bug fixes.  Please refer to the Release Notes found on the Help menu inside of FRED for a complete listing of all enhancements and defect resolutions.