No direct solar radiation on my model

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a new building in Luxembourg. The fact that it's in a city and that the layout of the building is an "E" in plan means there are dark corners where very little light can reach.

I did an incident solar radiation analysis to see the best location for windows but was suprised to see that the total solar radiation was much more constant than I'd imagined over the building envelope. Then I looked at just the direct solar radiation component and found it was zero everywhere(!) so it seems the calculation is just using diffuse radiation. Is this correct? It doesn't seem logical to me.

I'm using the Brussels weather data file from the Ecotect website since this is pretty closeby and I've checked and there is hourly diffuse and direct solar radiation data in it. I'm using the correct longitude and latitude for the site.

If any could help me out I would be very grateful!

Thank you,

Alex

[Anonymous]

Solved the problem....

The normals for all my surfaces were pointing inwards instead of outwards.

Hope this helps anyone else with the same problem.