The amount of sunlight exposure on a façade or landscape is an important metric for successful design.
Use the Sunlight Analysis tools within the Solar App to review sun-hours exposure on facades and landscape.
💡 Note: Solar analysis only works for user-generated geometry. To include map geometry in your analysis, please see Use Map features to Create Geometry and Query Information
Set your target sunlight exposure value.
Click “Run Sunlight Hours Analysis” to begin.
Adjust the time window for the analysis using the chart. Each analysis covers a single day: drag horizontally to pick the date, and drag vertically to set the start and end times. The analysis runs for both facades and landscape. There's no analysis for a whole year or a date range. To compare seasons, such as the winter solstice and midsummer, run the analysis once for each date.
Note the table showing the % of areas receiving the target sunlight hours
Click the Graph to view the % of façade and landscape to receive the hours of sunlight defined.
The colors overlaid on the map geometry reflect the number of hours of sunlight received.
Adjust the opacity of the color overlay.
Mouse over the map to see the exact sun hours for any given area
Why some buildings are missing from solar analysis
Solar analysis only uses the geometries you draw in your project. It measures sun hours on two kinds of geometry: building facades and landscape. Giraffe leaves a building out of the results in these cases:
The geometry isn't a building usage. Giraffe only measures facades on geometries with a building section, dwelling, or basement usage. A context volume or generic volume can look like a building and still gets no facade results. It still casts shadows on your other geometries. To measure it, change its usage to a building usage in the property palette.
3D buildings and trees from data layers or the base map. 3D buildings and trees from a data layer or the base map are not part of the analysis. They don't cast shadows and get no sun hours. To include a neighboring building, draw it as a geometry with a building usage and its real height.
Hidden layers and scenarios. The analysis skips geometries on a hidden layer or in a hidden scenario. Show the layer or scenario, and the analysis runs again.
No Facades is on. Giraffe skips facade results for a building whose No Facades property is on. The building still casts shadows. Turn off No Facades in the property palette to get facade results.
Below-ground or very short geometries. Giraffe gets no facade results for a geometry whose base is below ground or that is 2 m tall or less. Geometries 1 m tall or less don't cast shadows.
Get solar results for each building
The Solar app shows one result for the whole project: the % of all facades and all landscape that get your target sun hours. It doesn't split this by building, and solar results don't appear in Analytics, so grouping Analytics by Building won't break them down.
To check one building, hover over its facades on the map to see the sun hours for each area.
To get a % for one building, turn on No Facades for the other buildings in the property palette and run the analysis again. Those buildings still cast shadows, so the result for the building you're checking stays accurate. Turn No Facades off again when you're done.
Solar analysis is slow or won't finish
Solar analysis can take many minutes, or seem to never finish, even on a few simple buildings. It runs in your browser and checks every landscape hex and facade segment against every building, once per time step.
To speed it up, open Adjust Resolution in the Solar app and change these settings:
Raise Landscape Hex Size to 5 m or more. Giraffe fills each landscape geometry's whole bounding box with hexes, so one large or irregular landscape creates many points.
Raise Time Step to 30 or 60 minutes. The default of 15 minutes checks about 40 sun positions over a 10 hour day.
Raise Facade Segment Length. Giraffe splits every wall into segments on every floor, so tall buildings create many points.
Shorten the time window with the hour sliders.
Each change to your geometries, the date, the hours, or a resolution setting starts a new run after the current one finishes. Set the resolution first, then run the analysis. Reload the page to clear a run that is taking too long.