Future Lighting Solutions yesterday announced the release of SSL Designer, the first online design tool for solid-state lighting applications that combines the ability to set and optimize design parameters based on target specifications with the ability to calculate system costs and payback schedules. The new software – intended as the starting point for developing LED systems – facilitates and accelerates engineering design decisions as well as managing the tradeoffs between performance and costs.
SSL Designer enables users to:

• Easily determine the minimum number of LEDs and the optimal drive current to meet specific light output, efficacy and lifetime targets.
• Calculate the total cost of ownership of a given solid-state lighting system and compare it to a traditional lamp-based design.
• Calculate the length of time required to recover LED system costs.

In addition, SSL Designer offers critical features unavailable elsewhere such as the ability to save different design scenarios for later use; select circuit boards and heat sinks to better define the thermal solution; and override LED typical values such as flux, forward current and forward voltage for improved accuracy.

The software builds on and complements other Future Lighting Solutions online tools, including the Usable Light Tool (ULT) for analyzing LED performance under specific operating conditions; LED Reliability Tool (LRT) for determining LED lifetime; and QLED for detailed thermal analysis of the LED solution. These tools can be used to refine SSL Designer-generated designs.

“SSL Designer is an all-in-one software tool for assisting lighting designers in making critical design decisions such as LED type, count and drive current while also demonstrating the impact of those decisions on the overall system solution,” said Patrick Durand, Worldwide Technical Director, Future Lighting Solutions. “This dramatically reduces the time-to-market because it enables first-time-right designs.”

About Future Lighting Solutions
Future Lighting Solutions (www.futurelightingsolutions.com) is a leading provider of LED lighting components and support services for solid-state lighting products and installations, including engineering expertise, concept development, full system solutions and online tools that accelerate quality application development. The company is a division of Future Electronics.