Say hello to the newest graduate of the Autodesk Labs program.
Until recently, Solar Analysis for Revit was a technology preview for Autodesk’s popular Revit platform. It was put up with the Lighting Analysis plug-in as a potential new technology but was popular enough to graduate from Autodesk Labs.
As it stands, Solar Analysis should be released as a beta or even as a product release in short order.
Solar Analysis for Revit is designed to provide useful information about a structure to help design effective solar cell systems.
The technology is designed to allow users to perform full-range solar analysis on building surfaces in Revit. It is capable of mapping the full solar spectrum: from UV to visible light to IR.
It enables users to see and account for design aspects like shading devices and apertures. This will assist in the design of photovoltaic (PV) cell systems and other passive solar energy systems.
It is also capable of accounting for nearby objects that could affect solar radiation, like large flora or other buildings in urban areas. However, it doesn’t consider reflections from other structures or surfaces in its analyses.
Fortunately, this oversight shouldn’t be difficult to correct. Light reflections are calculated with ray tracing software, which Autodesk Labs happens to have with its Ray Tracer software. It was first used for the 3ds Max graphics software, but has since been piped into Revit, AutoCAD, Navisworks and Showcase.
Ray Tracer could potentially be used to calculate the additional radiation effect of reflections from nearby structures, but so far Autodesk hasn’t said anything about it.
A New Insight for BIM
Solar Analysis was originally released as a tech preview back in October of 2014 with the plan that it would run until the end of that year. However, its popularity kept the preview running through multiple extensions until November 16, 2015.
While Autodesk has not officially announced when the plug-in will be available in Revit, a source at the lab seems to indicate that it could be in the Autodesk App Store as early as December 1, 2015.
Solar Analysis for Revit will be released as part of the Insight 360 package. It will initially only support Revit 2016, but support for 2015 is in the works.
For more information, check out the Autodesk App Store.