You can understand and quantify the amount of the sun’s energy on your site and building with solar load analysis (solar radiation analysis).
- Climate Analysis: Know what passive design strategies are best, and how much total radiation is on your site.
- Sun and shadow studies: Help you harness both energy and light because it tells you how the sun moves through the sky and what shades your site
- Energy Loads Analysis: Know where heat is being gained or lost, and when you need to heat and cool.
The workflow below will help you strategically use these analysis tools.
See this short case study from Henning Larsen Architects used solar radiation to improve the massing and orientation of a hotel and housing project in Denmark.
Before you can effectively use the radiation values reported in the software, it’s important to know what the numbers represent. See the Solar Radiation Metrics page.
Using Vasari and Revit, you can calculate incident solar radiation. Using Ecotect you can calculate absorbed and transmitted radiation, given the material properties assigned to your walls, roof, and windows.
Dive Deeper
PV Panel Factors in Revit
Using Insight, you can easily explore the impact and interaction between several design variables that affect the photovoltaic potential of the surfaces in your model.
Evaluating PV Potential in Revit
You can assess the amount of solar radiation available to any surface of your building design in the Revit application as well as in Insight web interface. You can use the Solar analysis tool in Revit or generate Insight and visualize the PV Potential in the Insight Model Viewer.
