Installation on Mac

Downloading the software

To download the latest version of the Luceda Photonics Design Platform, sign in or request an account on the Luceda customer portal. You will find a download link in your personal account page.

We also advise you to use a Python IDE, more information on how to download and install one can be found here: Downloading & installing Python editor

Installing the software

After opening the executable installer, please follow the steps of the installation program. The installation will proceed in two steps: it first extracts all files to the installation folder, and then sets up the initial ipkiss3 environment. The installation can take up to five minutes.

After the installation, Luceda Control Center is launched. If that is not the case, you can find the control center in the launchpad, or in the ‘Applications’ folder in your home directory.

Image of the Luceda Control Center.

Luceda Control Center allows you to manage your installation and get access to useful resources.

Installing your license

You can activate your license by clicking on Add License in the Product License tab of the Luceda Control Center and selecting your license file. You can also put the license file in the ~/luceda/luceda_2025030/luceda/envs/ipkiss3 manually. More information about licenses can be found in the License types section. If you have a floating license, please follow these instructions: Configuring a floating license.

Getting started

You are now ready to start diving into our software, a good starting point is Circuit layout.

The following content can also further help you to get started with IPKISS. Click on PyCharm (Luceda Academy) in the Luceda Control Center to open the Luceda Academy project (which is available in the ~/luceda/luceda_academy/luceda_academy_2025030 directory in your home folder). If this button is greyed out, click on Terminal and then type ‘setup-samples’ and hit enter to make sure that the Luceda Academy project is properly set up. From here on out, you can dive in the code:

  • These guides contain step by step instructions to create various examples.

  • The sample gallery is a collection of in depth examples.

  • The application examples provide demonstrations of complete photonic integrated circuits.

If you want to start your own projects, you will have to install design kits and configure your Python IDE (Integrated Development Environment). More information on these topics can be found in Installing Design Kits and Setting Up Your Environment.

If you face any issues with installation or licensing, please check our troubleshooting guide.

Uninstalling

To uninstall the Luceda Photonics Design Platform the following directories need to be removed:

  • The Luceda Apps under ~/Applications

  • If you want to remove this version of the platform after upgrading * ~/luceda/luceda_2025030/luceda * ~/luceda/luceda_academy/luceda_academy_2025030

  • If you want to completely remove all version of the platform, including the PDKs: * ~/luceda