Vasari Analyze
The most interesting functions in Vasari are the analysis tools. With this tools you can analyze your design still when it is only a mass, so this tools can be used to make your design better. There are a couple of analysis tools which will be explained.
Solar study
The sun path is a visual representation of the sun's range of movement across the sky at the geographic location you specify for a project.
With the solar study you use the shadow and sun path settings to see how the shadow drops over the buildings etc. This sun study works exactly the same as how it works in Revit.
Create a solar study in Vasari
- Go to a 3D view. It's best practice to create a new 3D view for every analysis you want to do so you can specify the particular settings for that analysis.
- On the View Control Bar, click
(Visual Style) and in the pop-up click Graphic Display Options.
- In the Graphic Display Options dialog:
- Under Shadow, verify that Cast Shadows is selected. Another option is to use the Shadow Icon
. This will turn the shadow ON/OFF.
- To control the Shadow contrast, you may change the Shadow value under Lighting. The default is 50, lower values result in smaller contrast between bright and shadow areas. Set it to 30 for now.
- Under Shadow, verify that Cast Shadows is selected. Another option is to use the Shadow Icon
- On the View Control Bar, click
(Sun Path) and in the pop-up click Sun Settings.
- In the Sun Settings dialog, select Single Day.
- In the Settings column, for Location, Click the ... button to select a location. Type the name of the town or city to locate it on the map. Click OK. If you have set your Location at the start of your project, this is not necessary!
- Select a date and time.
- For Time Interval, select 15 minutes.
- Click the Save Settings button and specify a name for these settings as a preset. Click OK
- Click OK.
- On the View Control Bar, click (Sun Path) and select Sun Path On.
- On the View Control Bar, click (Sun Path) again and select Preview Solar Study.
- On the Options Bar, click Play. See left top corner.
The solar study animation is displayed, showing the progression at 15-minute intervals for the location and date specified. In the top left corner of the window a bar will appear with some options to play this animation.
Note: Sun Settings can also be found through the Manage tab > Sun Settings.
Solar radiation
Vasari can calculate the amount of solar radiation on mass surfaces created in the conceptual model environment. One of the best things of this solar radiation tool is that it’s so incredibly fast that if you leave the solar radiation dialogue box open, changes in the model will be real time and automatically recalculated.
Make sure that for every design option you make a separated 3D view, else there is a possibility that there is some interference between each other.
Note: If there are zero solar radiation points then there is a simulation error because zero solar radiation is impossible.
For the visual output of the analysis there are different options, you can control these options in the Manage ribbon > Analysis Display Styles. Here you can make new styles for example with markers and text to see the actual values or only the colors. Note: this solar radiation tool can be used to see what the amount of sunlight is in for example a courtyard.
Create Solar Radiation analysis
- Open a model that contains conceptual massing elements.
- Click Analyze tab Solar Analysis panel Solar Radiation.
The Solar Radiation dialog has two tabs: Settings, where you specify settings that will be used to perform the analysis, and Output, where you control the resolution of the resulting images, and save the image, if desired.
- Click the Settings tab and specify sun settings, analysis accuracy and data display options.
- To set the sun settings Click the button next to the text Spring Equinox. In the Sun Settings dialog, select Still. In the Settings column, for Location, Click the ... button to select a location. Type the name of the town or city to locate it on the map. Click OK. If you have set your Location at the start of your project, this is not necessary! Select a date and time.
- Set Type to Cumulative, this will give the total of all values calculated for the study period.
- Set unit to kWh/m2, (kilo Watt hour per square meter).
- Select an existing presentation style to use for displaying the results of the analysis. Solar Radiation Default is available as a preset, or click Browse to create a new style. See Display Styles for Add In Applications for more information.
- Click the Output tab, and then Click Save to project. This will create a Rendering view of your solar radiation analysis in the Project Browser.
- When you are finished choosing the analysis options, click the Analyze button on the Solar Radiation dialog. Now a window is prompted and you can choose from two options: 1) Analyze all faces in the view. If you have one mass you want to analyze choose this option. 2) Select the faces to analyze. Choose this if you have individual faces to analyze.
- Once the analysis is complete, you can create still renders of your solar radiation analysis.
Wind Analysis
There are two different methods to do a wind analysis with Vasari. You have the wind tunnel tool which you can use for easy to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for early stage conceptual analysis of airflow around building site and building form. The other tool is the wind rose, this wind rose will show you the wind directions of the location but doesn’t do any analysis.
Wind tunnel
The following workflow is important to get the most out of your analysis.
- Sizing analysis grid: It’s important that there is enough buffer space between the model and the size of the grid so that the airflow is not artificially constricted at the edge of the analysis. If the grid is not large enough, wind speed will accelerate through that constricted space. Tip: a good starting size is to have the grid size 2-3 times the size of the model itself. For more accurate results, recommended an even larger size grid, 5 times the length, 5 times the height, and 10 times the length.
- Setting wind speeds and directions: When you open the wind tunnel tools, the initial velocity and wind direction are based on the weather data of the site you specified in the site settings. It should be the prevailing wind direction of that location specified in the wind rose diagram. Although there can be an error so you should always compare the velocity settings with the condition you want to simulate. You also can specify the wind direction yourself with the head-up display. It is recommended that you use the frequency distribution because its radial axis is speed and should correlate with the speed slider, else you can get much higher wind speeds than you want to simulate.
- 2D or 3D analysis: if you simulate in 3D, you can interrogate the results with 2D slices or fully visualize them with 3D volumetric data visualization. To produce more accurate results, it’s always better to run the analysis in 3D. In 3D you also get a better impression about the different wind flows. To do a 3D analysis check the box at 3D, make sure you check under 3D volumetric tab the show 3D volumetric.
Notes: Vasari only can analyze mass volumes so make sure your geometry only is build out of masses, but you can panel the masses because Vasari still sees it as a mass.
Also beware that the speeds you’re inputting into the simulation are in m/s.
Step for step how to do a wind tunnel analyzes of your geometry 2D
Hint before you start: pause the airflow simulation so you can quickly change the settings.
- Go to the analyze tab in the ribbon and hit the wind tunnel analyze button.
- A pop up window appears with the actual analyzes.
- Make sure you set the wind direction right, go to the top view in the analyzes. If you look to the wind rose in the bottom left corner you see, if you hoover over it, it highlighted and you can see what the prevailing wind direction is. You still have to set the wind speed.
- Go back to a 3D view in the wind tunnel analyze and set the position of the data slice on the correct position and on the correct axis.
- Now you can do proper wind analysis.
Step for step how to do a wind tunnel analyzes of you geometry 3D
- Uncheck the box show 2D data slice in the 2D grid slice options.
- Check the box show 3D volumetric under the 3D volumetric options.
- Choose by display a kind of analyzes you want to do, flow lines is the most usable for our kind of simulations.
- Click on the flow lines settings button. A pop-up window appear.
- Select in this pop-up window form where you want to get the flow lines from (the smoke in a real wind tunnel, make sure this is from the right wind direction). In this pop-up window you also set the properties of the analysis, how many lines you want (note: every lines slowing down your analysis),
- If you are satisfied with the settings, hit OK.
- Start the analyze make sure you check 3D in real time analysis.
Extra tips for creating a wind analysis
When creating horizontal and vertical 2D slices for your wind analysis it is important to set the correct position of your slice. The position specifies the relative slice position. Use the slider bar or enter a numeric value to change the position. If you create a wind analysis and the position of your 2D data slice won’t go below a certain numeric value you will have to change the Analysis Grid Settings. Go to Analysis Grid Settings and change the Z Axis and Voxel Size till you get the desired result.
Set the velocity on 5 and 15 m/s and change the angle to 270 degrees. The horizontal slice position should be set on 5 feet (1,5 m). For the horizontal XY-slice choose a voxel size of around 2 and change the Z axis around -5. The Voxel size and the hight of the 2D XY-slice are in feet and not meters. 1 meter = 3.3 feet.
For the vertical XZ-slice set the Z axis in the analyse grid setting around -7. If your voxel size is to small your computer may not be able to compute the wind analysis.
View Navigation
Use the Navigation commands to adjust the viewpoint of the model and create print screens of your horizontal and vertical slices. These controls do not change the viewpoint of the model in your project, they only affect the Wind Tunnel model view.
Perspective view. Orients the view to a perspective view which portrays height, width, and depth.
Plan view. Orients the view to a plan view.
Side view. Orients the view to the south-facing side
Fit to view. Expands or resizes the model to fit the view window.
Wind rose chart
As you can see in the picture the wind rose gives the data for a specific location. With the sliders in the bottom of the window you can control which months and which hours of the day will be included in this data.
The wind rose chart shows the distribution of wind speed, wind direction and relative frequency for a given date and time range. The chart comprises 16 angular wedges, each representing an arc of 22.5 degrees around the entire circle. The overall radius of each wedge represents the percentage of time that the wind came from that direction during the calculation period. Each wedge contains 8 different colored segments. The color of each segment represents the speed of the wind when it was coming from that direction, as shown in the legend immediately to the right of the chart. The radius of each colored segment (and therefore its size) shows the relative percentage of time that the wind from that direction was within that speed range.
Weather Data
The chart is generated from hourly weather data retrieved from the weather station you selected for your project, or the closest weather station to the project location if you have not yet selected a specific station. This data is downloaded automatically and, depending on internet traffic, there may occur a short delay.
Creating a Wind Rose in your Vasari Project
You can create a copy of the currently displayed wind rose within your project by using the Send wind rose to project button. This will load a wind rose family object and adjust it using the calculated wind speed, direction and frequency data.
Exporting analysis results
Wind tunnel
Unfortunately the Vasari wind tunnel tool can’t save or render any images, so if you want to get this wind tunnel analysis out of Vasari you should use print screens.
Solar study
The solar study you made in Vasari can be exported. Either a movie or an image. Create export solar study movie:
- Make sure you set the solar settings on single day or an other multi day analysis.
- Go to menu->export->images and animation->solar study.
- A pop-up window appears. In this window you can set which frames you want to show (every frame is a step in the solar study, which you specified in the sun settings). Make sure you use a low frame/second number else the video is real short and very fast.
- Click OK.
- Save the video, now the movie will be rendered this could take some time.
- You can play the movie in Windows media player or another suitable video player.
Create solar study image:
- Make a view with the settings you want for the image.
- Go to menu->export->images and animation->image. A warning appears which you can ignore, just hit close.
- A pop-up window appears. Here you can specify the quality and size of the image. You also can specify the destination you want to save to.
- Click OK.
