Free software for solar analysis
Where you live, the local climate, the orientation of the building, and its shape broadly define how the sun’s rays enter our home. These conditions, which are not trivial at all, are studied in what is called insolation.
In architecture, good insolation allows maximizing natural lighting, which can reduce electricity costs (less use of air conditioning) and improve the well-being of users, almost nothing!
Normally, in the design process of a project, a solar behavior analysis (solar radiation) is already carried out on the building, but for already constructed buildings, it is not economically viable! So… What do we do?
To solve these problems, we have several online software for solar study that are excellent and free, without the need to install anything on the computer, that simple! We are talking about the applications of architect Dr. Andrew Marsh.
This gentleman has a weakness for studying the behavior of the sun on buildings, and thanks to this, he has created a series of applications that work with the browser completely free. Those related to the sun are:
Among the different tools we can access for online shadow study, solar or psychrometric chart, interior lighting, etc. There are three that we find very good:
- The first, Dynamic Daylighting dedicated to the behavior of natural light and its penetration on a facade and possible openings (Windows, doors, overhangs, etc).
- The second, 3D Sun-Path which has a more generic perspective for analyzing the incidence – path of the sun and shadows on a constructed element, to carry out a shadow study (See also insolation calculation in architecture).
- And the third, Dynamic Overshadowing which broadly analyzes the possible shadows of the construction elements surrounding our house and their effects.
For example, for the 3D Sun-Path application on a building… Do you want to see how the sun path diagram and shadow projections change on a house?
They are useful applications for bioclimatic architecture projects, take advantage of them!
Besides working in our own browser, there are two important features to highlight:
- When you enter these applications, there is a pre-designed model for you to “play” with, but we can redesign the existing construction to adapt it to our circumstances or upload our 3D model.
- Another impressive feature of these tools is that it allows recording in video the sun’s path and how it affects a constructed element.
But there’s much more! For us, there is a very useful solar app that performs an in-depth analysis of how natural light penetrates our home, it is the Dynamic Daylighting application… Why?
The application investigates the dynamic analysis of daylight in real-time within a simple room based on detailed sky distributions, it’s crazy!
The size of the room, windows, doors, external shading devices, and the height of the work plane, can be interactively manipulated with the internal distribution of the natural light updating in real-time.
This app implies that it can solve many doubts…. I’m going to enlarge the windows of my house… How will the sun affect me? I want to buy a house… Will the sun enter the dining room? How far? I want to put a pergola in my house… Will the sun’s rays enter my house?…
Additionally, any number of windows, external shading devices, and obstacles can be added, dimensions changed, and experiments with different surface reflectances and window transmittances.
To access the tools of architect Dr. Andrew Marsh from HERE. We highly recommend you try them, they are very good!
🟧 Note: A map of solar radiation in buildings for Spain has recently been published that answers a simple question… Is your roof a good candidate for solar panels?
And if you feel like trying the latest in decoration, we have an article on several decoration applications with AI (artificial intelligence).
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