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Early design approaches are becoming increasingly important in the architectural design process. Studying the buildings performance after occupancy has allowed our field to study the accuracy of design modeling. This has been especially true with daylight analysis. Specifically in school settings, daylight is not only desirable but crucial to the health and performance of children. Analysis of daylight in the architectural field has increased as the opportunity to perform more accurate simulations during the design process. Alongside this development, there is a move to explore the efficiency of software analysis to real world projects. This research examines the effectiveness of digital daylight analysis against post-occupancy daylight field measurements for the Vernonia K-12 School. The two software programs analyzed in their accurate simulation of daylight are 3ds Max and the Rhino Radiance Plug-in Diva. This study focused on two primary influence factors; material specifications and sky modeling. Through a series of digital iterations and two sets of field measurements (one from Boora Architects, the other from our research), the comparison between software and real data exposed a consistent error in both programs. This analysis was also compared with the initial digital and field data of Boora Architects. Results show that 3ds Max is more suitable for design during early stages of design, while Diva provides a more accurate relationship to material representation. Further, this study provides a sufficient starting point for additional exploration of post-occupancy utilization of the primary users and more in depth analysis of digital programming factors.
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