Forum discussion

NC-v4 EQc7:Daylight

Simulate Spatial Daylight Autonomy and Annual Sunlight Exposure

Hello everyone, Could someone tell what software is capable of simulating the sDA and ASE according to IES LM 83 methodology ?

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Tue, 05/27/2014 - 22:37

Is reference to the IES LM 83 in the User's Guide, because I don't see it in the credit language and don't have a User's Guide yet? Either way, the program that I know of off the top of my head is Daysim. It's possible that Autodesk's Green Building Studio, AGi32, IES-VE and/or others do also but I'll need to check.

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 14:34

Hi Jill, thanks for your reply Yes, the reference to IES LM 83 is from the User's Guide. It is the standard which describes the new metrics "sDA" and "ASE" to evaluate the access to daylight. The problem is that Daysim does not produce a result file with the Annual Sunlight Exposure and I don't know how to get this result with the data provided by Daysim. Also, for sDA simulation, the methodology requires that all blinds must be modeled and shall close whenever more than 2% of the analysis points receive direct sunlight. I don't know what software can do that.

Thu, 06/12/2014 - 19:54

Hi Julien, You probably can take the raw hourly data from daysim and customize with excel. I did with Diva-Radiance. There is shading control in diva-radiance as well. Please see exception page 5 in the IES LM regarding your blind issue. If Diva can't address your need, you can always map manually and do specific calculation per specific time. If I am not mistaken, Diva uses daysim engine so you should have similar output and capability.

Tue, 10/07/2014 - 19:53

Daysim run in the source code can do it, but its hard and I have never done it myself. Right now there is a plug in for Daysim which allows you to set the function of the shades, which you can produce something similar to the ASE. Have you looked into the latest version of DIVA for Rhino? If you don't use Rhino, DIVA doesn't help. Release 3 just came out.

Tue, 10/07/2014 - 20:31

My understanding is that the new version of Diva (3.0, currently in testing) offers a single click LEED Daylighting analysis. The team that developed Diva includes Christoph Reinhardt, who also has been coordinating the devlopment of Daysim. http://daysim.ning.com/page/credits I'm sure when it debuts it will comply with the LEED requirements as they have a very savvy team at Diva. If you're interested, LMN is soon to publish a blog post with our take on various daylighting software here: http://lmnts.lmnarchitects.com/ -Kjell

Sat, 09/12/2015 - 20:56

SPOT Pro meets the reporting requirements for LEED v4 EQ c7. SPOT Pro is a handy interface to Radiance.

Tue, 09/22/2015 - 06:22

Option1: EnergyPlus can do this with it's daylighting simulation module, which is not a raytracing program. You'll need a bit of experties to bin the results...it's not an automatic report. Option 2: As far as I know, DesignBuilder are developing this into there radiance module which currently does not support using TMW weather files, but uses the normal radiance sky condition types. Doing a clearsky as per the old v3 radiance method AND an annual e+ daylighting simulation could capture the best of both worlds...perhaps some sort of combo from option 1 & 2 is the best solution. Otherwise, I hear "DIVA & Rhino" can do this.

Mon, 08/08/2016 - 19:54

I am considering using SPOT pro for daylight analysis to show compliance with LEED v4. Can SPOT pro create buildings which have offsets in their geometry or can it create only rectangular blocks?

Tue, 08/09/2016 - 14:42

Latest version of Spot Pro will let you do more than just boxes. Watch their tutorials.

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