Comparative Analysis of Performance in Natural Lighting Software

The growing importance of Sustainable Architecture, associated with the use of natural lighting, as a matter of visual, energetical and thermal efficiency, accompanied by the advance of computer science in the last few years, led to the use of software to evaluate the performance of day lighting in buildings. The scope of this project is to compare the performance of various simulation programs for the analysis of natural lighting, in order to unify criteria and attempt to indicate their suitability for everyday use by a professional, a researcher or a student of Architecture. Few studies have been performed in this field hence the relevance of this theme. For the realization and development of this scope, the following software: Artlantis, Autodesk Ecotect Analysis, Daylight, Design Builder, Google Sketchup and Radiance were used as a base of comparison in both qualitative and quantitative approaches. In the qualitative approach, the software have been subjected to certain parameters assigning an ordinal ranking according to the satisfaction of these. For the quantitative, were compared the DLF values computed from the various software in analysis, through the use of a case study.