Mostadam is the new Rating System introduced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has been designed to be well adapted to the climate of the Kingdom in order to develop sustainable buildings in Saudi Arabia.
More information can be found on the official website.
We present here only the targets focusing on Daylighting in Mostadam Rating System for the 3 categories of building identified in Mostadam (Education, Commercial and Residential).
Within Mostadam the calculation of illuminance levels (lux) should be performed for 6 differents moments corresponding to "summer equinox and solstice" at 10am, 12am and 2pm (as specified in the standard).
The requirements for the 3 categories of buildings are :
In its Mostadam module DL-Light chains these 6 calculations to provide the aggregated result corresponding to the requirements of Mostadam Rating System. It also provides the 6 individual results to allow for further investigation to improve the project.
Because of these 6 chained calculations the aggregated results required by Mostadam necessitates intense computation that may be compared to the calculations of 6 Daylight Factors one after the other. Moreover, Mostadam indicates that simulation should be performed using 7 bounces of natural light.
Hence the calculation time needed is higher than for other metrics.
Open SketchUp model. Follow recommendations to prepare your model for DL-Light calculations.
Open Mostadam dialog from toolbar or menu Extensions -> De Luminae -> Mostadam Rating System -> Activate extension and enter the parameters of the calculation.
Fields description:
Project name - Project name is used during export and for output filenames generation. The SketchUp model name is used by default.
Results - Directory where model
will be exported for calculation. It should be an existing or a
new directory where user has appropriate write/read privileges.
When calculation is started model geometry and resulting files
will be saved in mostadam_output subdirectory.
For SketchUp projects stored on network disk (Windows), see
Work on a copy of the model.
Display - Calculation mode selection:
Details - The default selection is the standard 50cm grid:
DL-Light allows to choose:
See sensors selection for more information on the choices of proposed sensors.
Ground albedo - Reflection factor of the ground. The value can be selected from the drop-down list or a custom value can be defined:
Requirements - Selection of requirements for one of the 3 building categories (Education, Commercial or Residential).
Location - Building location coordinates. Location can be based on SketchUp model location, or be Custom. Below is dialog for Custom location definition.
Note: the time zone is set to the default value "Asia/Riyadh UTC+03:00, without DST". This setting can be changed in the preferences.
Define materials characheristics.
Since calculation is done with validated Radiance tools it is necessary to 'attach' physically based material to each tag (layer) in SketchUp. Note that materials should be defined with their light reflectance and transmittance.
Materials panel consists of two main parts:
To attach a material to a tag (layer), select a row in the table and
either double-click on the chosen material in the tree or select the
material in the tree and press
Attach/Detach
button.
To detach from the tag (layer), select it and click
Attach/Detach
button.
To revert to previous state press the
Revert button.
The palette of false colors corresponds to the chosen display, Mostadam status or illumination by date. The colors of the palette are editable.
After all data are entered, select one or more surfaces and press Render or button.
As glazings are used for this calculation, it may be convenient to use the DL-Light select by layer dialog to select the areas to be calculated.
Calculation time depends on the number of selected surfaces, the level of sensors details and model complexity.
When results are imported, calculated surfaces will have appropriate false colors and Palette is opened.
Rendering for "Mostadam synthesis" display:
Rendering for "Illuminance by date" display:
Results analysis.
The Report dialog displays the distribution of results for current palette, and calculation parameters.
Report presentation for "Mostadam synthesis" display:
Report presentation for "Illuminance by date" display:
Show/Hide Sensors and Values explores results directly in the model for each sensor.
For further calculations on the same model:
DL-Light uses a calculation cache algorithm. It automatically detects if a surface requires recalculation or if a previous result can be reused. By default, the cache keeps the information of the last 20 calculations (value configurable in the preferences).
Archiving results:
DL-Light allows to archive all the results of a calculation: reports, textures and calculation steps (exported Radiance model, ...). This archive can be reloaded on the model, providing it is exactly the same model as during the calculation.
See the page Archiving results for more information about this feature.
Comparison of results
The comparison of two archives is displayed in a special report:
See the page Comparison of results for more information about the comparison of archives.
Snapshots:
Current SketchUp model view with imported results can be exported
with palette
or without palette
to png format. To explore created images user can open folder where
they are saved
.
This option is not supported in trial version of the extension (see
license information).