Autodesk Ecotect can help analyze right-to-light and solar access to ensure a building’s design doesn’t prevent other buildings from using to daylighting and solar radiation.

This video shows how the Right to Light tool within Ecotect can help with massing and orientation of your building form. The visualization tools can help you see potential problem areas, and by subdividing the surfaces and calculating the vertical sky component, you can further quantify the results.

Download dataset here

The UK has specific right-to-light guidelines produced by the Building Research Establishment (BRE). These guidelines are based on the rule of thumb that a building will have the potential for good interior diffuse daylighting if there are no obstructions above a 25 degree cut-pane from the horizontal, 2m above the ground.

Visualizing right-to-light in Ecotect, planes and sprayed particles. Building geometry above the cut plane (and visualized with the colored sections) could be cause for concern.

Another metric that the BRE uses as an indicator of daylight potential is the vertical sky component (VSC), which also can be calculated by Ecotect. This is the ratio of the direct sky illuminance falling on a vertical surface (usually the center of a window), to an illuminance with an unobstructed sky. The maximum value is 50% since the point is on a vertical plane, and half of the sky is obstructed by this plane.

This type of analysis is particularly useful for ensuring your building’s interior spaces have access to daylight, and ensuring your building is not blocking others’ access.

For more information on these concepts and types of analysis see the following pages on the Ecotect wiki:

• Sky Illuminance Models
• Vertical Sky Component Tutorial