The radiative heat transfer in an axisymmetric enclosure containing an absorbing, emitting, and scattering gray medium is investigated by using the finite volume method (FVM). Especially, formulations with the cylindrical base vectors are introduced and its characteristics is discussed by comparing with other solution methods in the finite volume category. By considering the three-dimensional procedure, the angular redistribution term, which appears in such curvilinear coordinates as axisymmetric and spherically symmetric ones, can be treated efficiently without any artifice usually introduced in the conventional discrete ordinates method (DOM). After a mathematical formulation and corresponding discretization equation for the radiative transfer equation (RTE) are derived, final discretization equation is introduced by using the directional weight, which is the key parameter in the FVM since it represents the inflow or outflow of radiant energy across the control volume faces depending on its sign. The present approach is then validated by comparing the present results with those of previous works. All the results presented in this work show that the present method is accurate and valuable for the analysis of cylindrically axisymmetric radiative heat transfer problems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.