Carbon Neutral Design

Discover how you can use whole building energy, water, and carbon analysis tools for more efficient, even carbon neutral building designs.

Shadows and Reflections

Display the sun’s position and path relative to the model at any date, time, and location. View shadows over the model, isolate individual shadows from selected objects, and assign colours in order to differentiate the effects of different objects or buildings. See how sunlight enters through windows and moves within a space. Tag objects in the model as solar reflectors and track movement of reflections across the site.

Shading Design

A wizard helps you design shading devices to meet complex shading requirements. It can also generate a shape to optimally shade a window for any specified period. Generate cutting planes that follow the path of the sun in order to cut profiles and produce site solar envelopes. Once you model a complex shading system, more quickly calculate how much solar radiation hits any part of the window or over time.

Solar Analysis

Visualise incident solar radiation on windows and surfaces, and show the differential incident solar radiation calculated over any period. Take advantage of site overshadowing to treat different parts of the facade. Compare incident gains during different seasons, more clearly showing variations in solar resources available to the building at times when heating or cooling is required. Calculate solar availability over the spaces around buildings and in highly overshadowed urban sites.

Lighting Design

Calculate daylight factors and illuminance levels at any point in the model or over the analysis grid. Once you calculate daylight factors in your model, use the advanced daylighting features to help determine potential savings due to daylight-linked lighting.

Right-to-Light

Analyse site projection angles, assess obstructions, calculate vertical sky components for any point or surface, and visualise the no-sky line in any space. Generate angled test planes from each window or facade you are studying, or physically project and color exactly the parts of a structure that are infringing.

Acoustic Analysis

Acoustic analysis options range from simple statistical reverberation times to sophisticated particle analysis and ray tracing techniques

Thermal Analysis

Calculate heating and cooling loads for models with any number of zones and with any type of geometry. Assign detailed material properties to all objects and annual hourly operational schedules to occupancy, internal gains, infiltration, and individual items of equipment.

Carbon Emission Reporting

The web service reports on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for nearly all aspects of the building, including on-site fuel use and emissions at power plants that supply electricity to the building. The analysis also summarizes the power plants that generate electricity for the electric grid that serves the building by fuel type.