Using FenestraPro with Insight360 Solar Analysis Plugin in Revit

Written by Simon Whelan

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May 21, 2019

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FenestraPro for Revit facade design skyline

Ahead of our webinar in early April on 5 Tips for Smarter Facade Design, we’ve been playing around with combining the use of FenestraPro for Revit with Autodesk Insight’s plug-in for Revit. Insight’s Solar Analysis for Revit is a great tool to understand some of the environmental considerations on facades and buildings, and where the problematic areas occur.

Currently Solar Analysis for Revit assumes glazing to be 100% transparent, so FenestraPro for Revit can be employed to get more granular detail on glazing specification.

Solar Insolation with FenestraPro

By mapping solar insolation, designers start getting a good understanding of where the problem areas will occur and where attention is required. For example, for the avoidance of overheating to the space to the building below, served by curtain wall assembly A, will require either:

A sunshade, to match other curtain walls;
A revised specification, with higher performing glazing;
A frit.

Glazing Specification with FenestraPro

Using FenestraPro to drill down into that curtain wall assembly, users can start understanding how to optimise our glazing selection to reduce solar heat gains in the space without sacrificing daylighting or in this case thermal performance.

Using FenestraPro for Revit, we can see instantly the following:

Low E Triple Glazing: R-Value for the Curtain Wall is good, but internal heat gains are poor;
Reflective Single Glazing: R-Value for the Curtain Wall is poor, but internal heat gains are good;
Reflective Double Glazing: R-Value for the Curtain Wall is good, and internal heat gains are good.

Using the snapshots feature of FenestraPro, we can compare and demonstrate the effects of the different glazing specifications.