Comparative evaluation of lighting design software programs for analysis of daylighting in buildings

This thesis outlines an approach to compare the various most commonly used daylighting/lighting design software programs available in the market and evaluate their performances based upon their capabilities to fulfill the assigned tasks by the users/lighting designers. The most widely available and commonly used potentially powerful lighting software programs for quantitative and qualitative daylight performance will be evaluated by assigning some test on various lighting concepts. A summary chart and the detailed evaluation procedures performed is to be created to guide the users and emphasize the available features and accuracy of the software for Architectural daylighting. These tests will bring to light the hidden bugs within these lighting software programs and will help users, cautioning them of the possible data errors while performing the analysis of their project jobs using these lighting design software programs. Physical models or base case real buildings may be used depending upon the requirements and time to analyze the accuracy of the final outputs of the computer software program generated models.