Every PIM project I’ve run had one slow part: the photometric files.
Since 2015, I’ve helped lighting manufacturers put their product data in order. Names, codes, attributes, images, all in one place. Then we reach the IES and LDT files. A catalogue has thousands of them. Each one carries text: the manufacturer, the catalogue number, the luminaire name. When a product name changes, every file that carries it has to change too.
Until now, that meant opening the files one by one.
So I built IESDesk. It runs in the browser at iesdesk.com, and it’s free.
I’m not a coder, so I used AI to write the code. It wasn’t easy, and it was definitely not one prompt. I started in April and put serious time into it after June. I tested the output against the related IES and CIE standards. The app has about 60,000 lines of code and about 66,000 lines of tests, so more code checks the app than runs it. No change goes in until it passes 3,764 automatic checks.
Since July, when I began tracking every change, I’ve made 477 approved improvements, from more than 2,100 small saved steps. Almost all of them came in the last six weeks. I’ve written down more than 300 decisions, each with its reason. I’ve also given more than 1,400 rounds of direction and review. I’ll write about how I work on it in a later post.
Now, it’s out there.
Still beta though, please be gentle.