Sefaira, the leader in software for high performance building design, today announced that its performance based design platform now includes daylighting analysis. With the addition of daylighting, Sefaira combines two critical design metrics in the same tool.
Now, architects can rapidly and intuitively balance trade-offs between energy and daylighting to create aesthetically pleasing and high performing building designs. With this addition, Sefaira continues its mission to deliver meaningful, intuitive performance analysis to architects within their native design environments.
Starting this month, daylighting analysis will be available in Sefaira for SketchUp, a plugin that already provides architects with real-time energy analysis without leaving their native design environment. By integrating industry leading and widely trusted daylighting engines, Radiance and DAYSIM, into this plugin, Sefaira can now deliver solid real-time daylighting and energy metrics within one single tool. Sefaira plans to add daylighting analysis to other design platforms later this year.
Powerful daylighting visualizations will help architects make data-driven design decisions and communicate clearly and effectively with their clients. Sefaira Daylighting provides key metrics like Spatial Daylight Autonomy (an indicator of the amount of daylight a space receives), and Annual Sunlight Exposure (a measure of direct sunlight, and an indicator of potential glare and comfort issues).
Leading Architecture Practices Excited about Sefaira Daylighting
A number of Sefaira customers have already started benefitting from the new Sefaira Daylighting feature, and they see great potential in the new capabilities:
“At BWBR, successful projects begin by engaging people in the conversation about the performance of their facilities,” said Jesse Turck, senior project architect at BWBR, a prominent architecture firm based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. “The improved real-time feedback interface in Sefaira for Sketchup, especially for daylighting and glare information, elevates the discussion on energy use. Sefaira gives us a tool to create higher performing, dynamic designs that enhance what people do.”
Sukreet Singh, an energy analyst at Cuningham Group, which is known for measuring project success based on its “Triple Bottom Line” sustainability business model of “People, Profit and Planet” said, “At Cuningham Group, we strive towards designing better daylit buildings while trying to meet our energy targets and 2030 goals. Sefaira gives us a great platform to understand this complex interdependent correlation at early design stages by experimenting with different window to wall ratios, shading possibilities, glazing systems, and orientation.”
Sefaira Empowers Building Designers
Sefaira CEO Mads Jensen said, “The key to our success is empowering designers to create high performing buildings by developing the products that they need to realize their vision. To do this, we work very closely with our customers, and a number of them have asked us to add daylighting as an essential performance metric to our products. Today’s release is the result, and it is yet another big technology investment which we have made to help designers take their high performance building designs to the next level.”
About Sefaira
Founded in 2009, Sefaira develops performance based design software to help architects design high performing buildings. Using Sefaira, architects and other building designers can analyze and compare multiple building strategies within a fraction of the time and cost previously required. This includes defining, quantifying, and optimizing the energy, water, carbon and financial benefits of relevant design strategies.
Sefaira won the 2013 Sustainability Leaders Innovation Systems & Software Award and the 2013 ENDS Green Economy Green Data Award. It has been named to the 2013 Global Cleantech 100, the 2013 Red Herring Top 100 Global, the 2013 European Business Award’s “They Could Be Giants,” and the 2012 Going Green Global Top 200 private companies. The company also won Gold at the 2013 Ecosummit award in Berlin as well as the “Green Building Innovation of the Year” award at London’s Ecobuild in 2011. Sefaira has offices in London and New York.
