Daylighting simulation: comparison of softwares for architect'sutilization.

Daylighting Simulation is a complex task, involving many parameters, but an important step to design buildings, especially when the main purpose is more comfort and energy conservation. For architects, sim­ulation is still something far from the professional practice, due to the software’s complexities, difficul­ties to use software’s interface, hard interpretation of the results and many other reasons. This article analyses and compares 4 daylighting soft­ware: Desktop Radiance, Rayfront, Relux 2004 Vi­sion and Lightscape. The objective of the study is to find the main advantages and limits of each one, tak­ing into account the priorities for the use of the soft­ware by the architects in their professional practice. Some criteria like interface, flexibility, help manuals, and others are analyzed, intending to establish a frame of the main points to be considered when choosing daylighting software for architects use, both in archi­tecture schools and offices. The methodology includes simulations with a test room, varying some parameters to verify the perfor­mance of the main criteria. The results show the po­tential of software’s improvement, especially regard­ ing the user interface and help manuals.