Why am I getting 0.0% sDA? or 100% sDA?

FAQ: My project has windows but I am getting no daylight penetration! Or my project is getting 100% sDA which is impossible!

Patrick Chopson avatar
Written by Patrick Chopson
Updated over a week ago

Getting No Daylight

One possibility for not seeing the impact of daylight on your building's floorplate is that some building components were improperly exported. Try using the "Element Selection" section of the daylight page's control panel to toggle the visibility of different building categories. Zoom in to areas with glazing and double-check whether the objects have any opaque geometry that would obstruct daylight. Note that the appropriate mesh property for transparent objects is a translucent blue, and opaque objects are translucent grey. The most common cause is that a user may have accidentally imported building geometry in front of their window objects, or did not export window geometry at all. Sending a screenshot to the live-chat team would also be useful for identifying the issue. Also if a user has used the Revit Plugin and modeled their windows in the Curtain Walls Revit Family, a host geometry may remain in the 3D View without being visible. These elements still carry area and material properties even without being visible, so it is recommended that the user highlight the 3D view in search of host curtain wall elements and manually hide them in view. These elements will be identifiable by a translucent blue selection with a darker blue dashed outline (see steps below).

If while toggling the element selection categories, and notice that all building elements have been incorrectly categorized the most common scenario is that with the Revit plugin, a user did not have the categories 3D Layer pulled up on screen during the export of that category. The correct workflow is opening the 3D View, then selecting to export geometry of that titled category with the plugin command. For example, Open "3D - cove.tool windows", click the "Export Windows" button, then proceed to the next export category by launching the next 3D View.

Getting 100% Daylight

Only one noted cause, you imported a roof as a floor object and thus have 100% exposure to direct solar rays. The solution, repeat the export process and place building geometry in the correct export categories. Your Roof objects will not have a daylight map displayed on it, so if you see a bright red plane above your project, you have a mis-layered roof/floor object.

Related Articles:

Did this answer your question?