AixRays is a software tool to model central receiver systems (CRS) and analyze their optical performance. As the tool is in general be used for heliostat field layout optimization, AixRays was developed with both computational efficiency and accuracy in mind. With sophisticated mathematical methods the accuracy was increased to reach highly precise results, while fast code libraries reduce the overall computational burden. Three different raytracing approaches and its parallelization on CPU and GPU result in one of the fastest and most accurate raytracer.

AixRays is used by researchers, industry technology developers, and academics to evaluate technology performance, quantify the value of research findings, and provide third-party, independent validation for privately developed tools.