Troubleshooting

All my results are zero (red)—this can’t be right.

This is often the case when transparent assets aren’t actually assigned to glazing materials. The glass in your model may look transparent, but you need to make sure the material asset assigned to it is transparent as well. Follow the steps for defining Transparent Materials, and pay special attention to assigning a transparent Asset. Using clear glazing is a good option.

If you’re confident that materials are properly set up, make sure there are no opaque elements blocking your windows. For example, sometimes when using layered wall constructions, a window element won’t create a void for all wall layers. If there is a wall layer, or any other element, blocking the windows, make sure to hide it in the “_Lighting Analysis Model View.”

Check the Rendering Settings for your view and make sure they are including the daylight or electric light inputs. Also check your Light Analysis Settings to make sure they support your input conditions.

Finally, check to make sure that your simulation date and time is occurring at an appropriate time. If you are analyzing daylight values at 12AM (midnight), there won’t be any daylight to simulate (unless of course you are in an extreme northern or southern latitude!).

I don’t think my results make sense.

If your results don’t seem right, be sure to check the suggestions listed above for material settings, glazing obstructions, settings, and simulation time. Additionally, you might want to check the following.

Opaque materials (walls, floors, ceilings, etc) may have a "self-illuminance" modifier defined in the Appearance tab of the Material Browser. This can happen artificial characteristics are used to enhance visual renderings.

In the “_Lighting Analysis Model View,” make sure there is not Section Box cutting a wall open, or any other part of your model. The Section Box is usually automatically ignored for analysis, but the Light Analysis Settings option may have been changed.

I’m seeing conflicting results planes between my 2D and 3D views.

It might be possible that there are two different Floor elements sandwiched together in your model. Since the lighting analysis planes are created from Floor elements if there are multiple Floor elements on top of each other or assigned to the same Level, there will likely be multiple analysis planes on top of each other, creating conflicting views or double markers. Try removing or hiding the unnecessary floors in the "_Lighting Analysis Model View." Bonus, doing so will probably lower your Cloud Credit costs as well.

Can I exclude Rooms from the calculation before I submit the analysis?

Rooms that are checked in checked or unchecked in the “_Lighting Analysis Room Schedule” will only impact results visualizations and threshold calculations. It will not impact futures analyses.

To exclude areas or elements from future lighting analyses, you will want to control the "_Lighting Analysis Model View."

How do I include the impacts of Sola-tubes in my analysis results?

Tubular skylights (SolaTube, Velux Sun Tunnel, ODL, etc) can be modeled as Light Fixtures associated with an IES lighting distribution profile. The IES files should be specific to location and time of your analysis and are available from most skylight manufacturers. Most manufacturers also have Revit families that can be used to host the IES file, or you can use any generic fixture to create a tubular skylight fixture.

After creating the fixture, follow the workflow to include electric lights, where the skylight fixtures are acting as electric lights.

Why aren’t Automated Shades available for sDA/ASE study types?

One of the differences between LEED v4 EQc7 opt1 (sDA/ASE) calculations and LEED v4 EQc7 opt2 (single point in time) calculations, is that for sDA/ASE analysis types, shades need to physically modeled, versus just expanding the threshold limits. Currently, Revit doesn’t include shades for sDA/ASE analysis types. However, it’s worth noting that including shades should change the results by a great amount. In fact, including automated shades won’t reduce the direct sun (ASE) liability, as ASE has to be calculated with shades open.

My available Cloud Credits aren’t right.

If your available Cloud Credits don’t match up with what is listed as available in manage.autodesk.com, you may need to contact your Autodesk reseller or submit a support request.

What information gets sent to the A360 Rendering engine from my Revit model?

Revit creates an SPD file that gets sent to the A360 Rendering engine. The SPD contains:

• Model geometry (as triangle meshes)
• Project location (represented by the associated weather file)
• Material definitions and texture images (if included)
• Light fixture definitions and associated IES files
• Date and time set for the analysis
• Names and positions of selected 3D view cameras

Additional Support

When sending support requests to Autodesk or the Insight Lighting & Solar Analysis Forum, always try to include the latest log file generated when you encounter the issue. This helps us see where the process breaks down. Note that your account ID, but no password, is in the log file, in case you want to obscure that.
The log file is in one of two locations:

• C:\Autodesk\RevitDaylighting
• %temp%\RevitDaylighting