Surrounding shading device optimization - crazy results

[giulioc82]

Hi All,

I am trying to optmize a surrounding shading device for some dates but I get crazy results. The shading device is "cross cutting" my wall and It is not correct for the time and date I set as the sun rays are hitting my surface just from one side!
My ecotect is the latest build Autodesk Ecotect 2009. The location is Jeddah - Saudi Arabia and the dates I want to calculate the shadind are from 21 Jun to 21 Aug from 12:30 to 15:00. I attach my settings and the ecotect file (zip).

Can anyone help with this please?

[drajmarsh]

Hi,

You were not too far off. It's just that you chose a shade type with vertical fins, which requires the calculation to run the full day.

However, you only need a tiny horizontal shade for the date/time period you selected. If you choose just a single horizontal shade option, you get the results shown in the attached files.

Hope that helps...

Kind regards,
Andrew

--
Dr. Andrew Marsh
Principal Software Engineer
AEC-Simulation
Autodesk, Inc.

[giulioc82]

Hi Andrew,

Do you mean that If want to calculate with vetical fins I need to run the caculation from 00:00 to 12:00 (a full day?)?

[drajmarsh]

Hi,

No, it seems to automatically use the whole day when you select the vertical fins option.

I'm guessing that the original testing required sunrise-to-sunset in order to generate viable vertical elements. I'll go through that bit of code again to see why it was done that way, but I don't have much time available this week so I probably won't get to it until the weekend.

All the other options use the exact hour settings as you specify them though. In your specific case, no vertical fins are required as a small horizontal element seems to do the trick 🙂 ...

Kind regards,
Andrew

--
Dr. Andrew Marsh
Principal Software Engineer
AEC-Simulation
Autodesk, Inc.