Sustainability analyses

The Sustainability tab on SpaceDesign's right rail runs six analyses on the model as it stands: Sun hours, Illuminance, Shadows, Noise, Wind and Solar energy. Each paints its result onto the 3D view and keeps the key figures beside it. Every run is kept in the History at the bottom of the tab, so you can model on and come back to a result without computing it again.

Hiding part of the model changes only what you see. A block you hide — with its eye, its label, or a floor view such as Isolate this floor — still casts its shadow, blocks daylight and wind, and screens noise; it is simply not measured or painted until you show it again. Shadows is the exception: it is the view's own lighting, so a hidden block casts nothing there.

Estimate or Detailed

Noise and Wind offer two levels. Estimate runs in your browser in seconds and is the right first pass while the massing is still moving. Detailed is a job on SpaceSync servers that takes minutes — you can keep modelling while it runs, and the result lands in History. The option says why it is unavailable when it is: the project is not on the server yet, you have view-only access, or the server has Detailed switched off. Detailed runs are rate-limited per day; the limit is higher on ProSync.

Noise

Noise hears everything around the site that makes noise: every road and railway the site context fetched — not only the ones inside the circle on screen — and the places OpenStreetMap knows nearby: industry and utilities (industrial land, works, power plants, substations, construction sites) and community venues (places of worship, markets, schools, stadiums, bars and nightclubs, bus and fuel stations, car parks). A road needs traffic data — its speed limit and its annual average daily traffic; for rail, the trains per day and the line speed — and a place its sound power and the hours it runs. Until you type them, every source runs on an estimate: a road from its class (a railway from its kind of line: a main line, a tram, a siding), a place from what kind of place it is. So Run is ready as soon as anything nearby makes noise; the card says how many sources run on estimates and Review opens the list — roads and rail, industry and utilities, community — where you type real figures or mute a source to leave it out. Roads in tunnels — a map road you mark as a tunnel too — paths and tracks are silent; street trams are heard as light rail. Hiding something in the view changes only what you see — mute it here, or delete a road on the Site tab, to take it out of the analysis. Speeds and distances follow your display units (mph and feet when you work in feet).

The Estimate is live. It starts when you open Noise and updates about a second after each change to the design, the site or a source: the map recolours in place, roughly at once and then in full, and the card's figures follow when the full map is up. It runs alongside your modelling without slowing it, and the map stays on while you select objects or work on the Site tab, until you pick another analysis or press End analysis. Run now runs the full estimate straight away and keeps it in the History — the live updates are not kept there, so press it for a result you want to compare or put in a report. Pause stops the updates in this browser: while paused, a change puts the result out of date, the map goes and the card offers Run again. A Detailed result never updates by itself either: it shows when it was run and says Design changed once the model has moved on.

Reading the result

The result leads with the answer that matters for planning: the governing level — the loudest point on your façades, or, with no building yet, the level 90 % of your plot stays under — and its verdict. In the United States that is the 24-hour DNL, which adds 10 dB to the night (22:00–07:00), judged against HUD's rule for housing: up to 65 dB is acceptable, 66 to 75 is normally unacceptable and needs 5 or 10 dB of extra sound insulation, over 75 is unacceptable. The verdict is for a land use — it follows the iteration's typology until you pick another under the level, and the pick is saved with the iteration. For schools, hospitals, offices, shops and industry the US uses the FAA Part 150 table, which is not in SpaceSync yet, so those land uses show the level without a verdict. Everywhere else the level is Lden, which adds 5 dB to the evening (19:00–23:00) and 10 dB to the night (23:00–07:00), judged against the WHO 2018 guideline: 53 dB for road traffic, 54 dB for railways.

Under the verdict, Day, Night (and Evening where the standard has one) show each period on the model without running again, and the rows show how much of the ground, the façades and the roofs falls in each of the verdict's bands. Changing the land use changes the verdict at once; the levels stay as they are. The share of each road's traffic at night is an estimate unless an official count gives it, and the estimate is said in the result. A Detailed result reads the same way, with the same periods and verdict, and is marked Detailed · ISO 9613-2; one made before Detailed learned the periods is the day level only (06:00–22:00), marked RLS-90 · day, without periods or a verdict. A very large scene can be too much for a Detailed run — too many roads and places in range, buildings around the site, or points to measure on the design — and the card says which before anything is sent, so it does not use up one of the day's Detailed runs.

Inspect points, then tap anywhere on the site — the coloured ground, a road, the ground beyond the map, your building or a neighbour's. The newest pin opens with the level there in the period on show, the verdict on the 24-hour level at that spot and what a building there needs, the three loudest sources heard there and — on a façade — the level floor by floor, read 1.5 m above each floor of the building behind it. Up to eight pins stay; the older ones show just their level. The pins follow the period you pick and every live update, and a pin whose spot is no longer on the map goes. On a Detailed or past result a pin shows the level only, and only on the coloured map.

The neighbouring buildings are painted too: every one shown on the site, on all its walls, with the level the roads and places around put on it — so you can see what the street does to the houses next to yours, and what your design and a barrier do to them. A wall facing the road is loud and the one behind it quieter, and a barrier's shadow shows on the lower floors behind it. They are there to look at and to Inspect, which gives a neighbour's level floor by floor like your own façades'. The result stays your design's: the governing level, the verdict, the bands, what your façades need and what a barrier buys read your design and the ground only. A building you hide is no longer painted but still blocks sound, and the same goes for every building while the Buildings layer is off. On a street with many buildings the far walls are painted a little coarser, and the farthest may be left unpainted. A Detailed result does not paint the neighbours yet.

Insulation and the noise report

Under the bands, Insulation says what your façades need: the noise level reduction (NLR) — how many decibels quieter than outside it must be inside, which the whole façade achieves together: walls, windows, doors and vents. In the United States, for housing, HUD's goal is 45 dB DNL inside. Up to 65 dB outside, standard construction gets there; from 66 to 70 dB HUD asks for NLR 25, and from 71 to 75 dB NLR 30 — the 5 or 10 dB beyond standard construction the verdict mentions; over 75 dB the site is unacceptable without special approval. A façade is one side of a building, by the way it faces — Block A · south façade — and its level is its loudest point.

Level | Insulation, beside the period chips, paints the façades by the NLR they need, with no new run; a period chip goes back to the level. Inspect on a façade adds its NLR, with the plain arithmetic beside it (its DNL less 45). For schools, hospitals, offices, shops and industry the NLR comes from the FAA Part 150 table, which is not in SpaceSync yet; outside the United States, internal targets (BS 8233, ProPG) come later. SpaceSync gives no window or wall ratings (STC, OITC) yet: the assemblies that reach an NLR are for an acoustician to specify.

Report (PDF) turns a noise result into a compliance report you can hand to a client or an authority. The first page is the summary: the verdict and the standard it is judged by, the share of the ground, the façades and the roofs in each band, the governing point with its day and night levels and the loudest sources there, and what each façade needs. The appendix backs it: every source with its figures, whether they were typed, counted or estimated and where they came from, every façade, the assumptions — the periods, the night share, the emission model, the land use — and the method and its limits. A report made later from History says the same, for the land use the run was judged for. ProSync only, 10 credits from the Render wallet, like every analysis report.

Adding roads and noise sources

A planned access road, a new tram line or a generator is not in any map yet, so you can draw it. Roads are drawn with Roads & paths on the Site tab — or right-click the ground for Draw a road from here, or + Road in the Noise list — and the drawing bar sets what the road is: a residential street up to a motorway, a rail line or a light rail line. That sets the traffic Noise hears on it, and a railway is built as ballast and rails; you can change it later on the road's bar or its card, and a road still at its type's width takes the new type's — a width you set yourself stays. Noise sources — a generator, a rooftop HVAC unit, a cooling tower, a playground or a custom source — come from + Add noise source under Noise sources on the Site tab, Add noise source here when you right-click the ground, or + Source in the Noise list. Click points along a road or a line and press Enter to finish, click the corners of an area and close it on the first, or click once for a point; a point can stand on a roof and keeps that height. Backspace removes the last point and Esc cancels. What you draw appears in the scene and in the Noise list marked Added, runs on an estimate like everything else, and is heard where you put it — on your plot too. A source, a road or a path can also go past the circle on screen, as far out as the site still hears it: 400 m beyond the edge. While you draw one, that limit is dashed on the ground and the streets and buildings out there are outlined, so you can click where it belongs — or right-click the ground out there for Draw a road from here or Add noise source here. Right-click a road for Noise properties to change its type, type its figures or mute it; right-click a source for Properties to name it, change its kind or height, type its figures, mute it or delete it. Every change can be undone.

Noise barriers

A noise barrier — a wall, or an earth berm with sloping sides — between a road and your building can take several decibels off its façades. Draw one with + Barrier in the Noise list, + Add barrier under Noise sources on the Site tab, or Draw a noise barrier from here when you right-click the ground: click points along its line and press Enter to finish. The drawing bar sets Wall or Berm, the height — 3 m, or 10 ft when you work in feet — and a berm's crest, the width of its top. The barrier stands on the ground in the scene, and the live Estimate takes it in about a second after you finish. It can run past the circle on screen too, out to the same dashed limit as a noise source — 400 m beyond the edge, as far as a barrier can still shield the site — and Draw a noise barrier from here is on the menu when you right-click the ground out there.

The Noise list shows your barriers under Mitigation, each with what it buys in the Estimate on screen: how far it lowers the governing level — the level the verdict is judged on — and the most it takes off any one point of your design or the ground (not the neighbours': their walls show it in their colour, and Inspect reads it). A wall can quieten the lower floors behind it a great deal and still buy nothing at the governing point, when a floor above it or another façade is the loudest; the list says so rather than hiding it. The figures show only while the result is the site as it stands — after a change they wait for the next update, and a Detailed result does not give them. Click a barrier, or right-click it, for Properties to rename it, change its kind, height or crest, mute it to see the site without it, or delete it; right-click for Edit points to move its line. Every change can be undone. A barrier only affects Noise: it casts no shadow and gives no shelter from the wind. The Estimate takes sound over its top; Detailed also takes sound round its ends and reflects it off its faces.

Official traffic counts and aircraft noise

For a site in the United States, Noise also looks up the official counts where they are available: the traffic counts the Federal Highway Administration publishes for most US roads (HPMS), and the Federal Railroad Administration's train counts at rail crossings (FRA). A road or railway with a count runs on it instead of its estimate and is marked Count, with where the figure comes from; a figure you type still wins, and Back to the count returns to it. If an agency's service does not answer, the card says so and runs on estimates. The same lookup shows the band the BTS national noise map gives for aircraft at the site, with the nearest airport — as a reference only: aircraft noise is not modelled, and BTS says its map is not meant for evaluating a single location.

Official noise maps

Where a published noise map covers the site, the Noise card offers Reference: the official map draped on the site's ground, and the levels measured nearby as pins. It sits beside your own result, never inside it — Noise does not compute with any of it, and while it is on the result's ground paint gives way so two colour scales never share one surface; the façades stay painted, and turning Reference off brings the ground back. The maps are shown in their publisher's own colours and bands — where a map's road, rail and aircraft layers overlap, each point shows the loudest band any of them publishes there, never a sum, so a quiet layer cannot hide a loud one (a map whose bands cannot be ranked yet is drawn road under rail, and its caption says so) — with the legend, the publisher's credit and licence, and its own caveat underneath. Reference is remembered in this browser; it is not saved with the iteration or shown to collaborators.

United States

The BTS National Transportation Noise Map — road, rail and aircraft, as a 24-hour average (LAeq,24h). BTS says it is not meant for evaluating noise at a single location.

England

Defra's strategic noise mapping, Round 4 — road and rail as Lden, on a 10 m grid at 4 m above the ground; levels below 40 dB are not mapped.

Europe

The EEA's strategic noise maps reported under the Environmental Noise Directive — major roads and the larger cities only. A national map takes precedence where one covers the site.

Switzerland

sonBASE from the FOEN and swisstopo — road and rail by day. A model calculation, not legally binding.

Measured points

Outdoor noise sensors in the Sensor.Community network — a 5-minute average at the time shown, a snapshot rather than a long-term level. Only sensors on the shown ground are pinned.

The same maps are overlays in spAIce: Road noise, Rail noise and Aircraft noise under Overlays in the basemap menu, listed only where a map covers the site, with the legend and credit on the map; with more than one on, they meet where they overlap as they do on the Noise card. A map image added to a moodboard while one is shown carries its credit. Each map is switched on once SpaceSync has checked it against its publisher's service, so a map listed here may not be available yet — where none covers the site, Reference and the overlays do not appear at all.

Finding traffic data

The speed limit is on the signs: a look along the road in Street View usually settles it, and reveals tram lines and noise screens as well. Traffic counts come from the road authority — search for the road together with *traffic monitoring*, *annual average daily traffic (AADT)* or *automatic traffic count*. These are the public sources we know of:

United States

Each state's Department of Transportation publishes traffic counts; most have an interactive map.

United Kingdom

The Department for Transport's road traffic open data.

Norway

NVDB (the national road database) for roads; Bane NOR for rail.

Sweden

Trafikverket nationally; Stockholm, Göteborg, Linköping and Malmö publish their own counts.

Germany

The EBA GeoPortal for rail; state portals such as NRW's MUNV and Hessen Mobil for roads.

France

The national road network counts; DiRIF for the Île-de-France roads; Paris and the departments (Val-de-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, Isère, Gard, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis) and the Occitanie region; Bruitparif for noise maps.

Denmark

The national road directorate; Copenhagen publishes its own counts.

Finland

The national transport agency; Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa publish their own counts.

Where no count exists, these orders of magnitude are what a planner would reach for, and what the estimates use: a busy highway carries 10 000–30 000 vehicles a day in a smaller country and 100 000–400 000+ in a larger one; a larger connector road 5 000–7 500; a quiet cul-de-sac 300–600. Every figure in the list says whether it was typed or estimated, and so does the result. The pieces of one named road are one row: a count typed there applies to the whole road.

A place's sound power is in its operator's noise assessment or permit when one exists. Until then it runs on a typical level for its kind, for the hours it is usually busy between 06:00 and 22:00 and the hours it runs at night — a 220 kV substation about 93 dB(A) day and night, a place of worship 90 dB(A) for an hour, industrial land 60 dB(A) for every square metre, a nightclub into the small hours. Both sets of hours can be typed in the list. Every place in the list links to its OpenStreetMap entry, so you can check what it is before you trust it.

Wind

Wind reads the site's long-term climate from two sources: the wind rose — how often the wind blows from each direction, and how strongly — from Global Wind Atlas 3.0, and an hourly series from the Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis, scaled to that rose, for the comfort statistics. The card names both and says when one is missing. The result is the mean pedestrian wind speed at 1.75 m and the Lawson LDDC comfort category: sitting, standing, strolling, walking, uncomfortable or unsafe, from how often 4, 6, 8, 10 and 15 m/s are exceeded. Display switches between speed and comfort without a re-run.

Solar energy

Solar energy measures the sunlight that falls on the design's roofs and façades over a typical year, with the shading of everything around them, and paints it in kWh/m² a year on a legend fixed to the site — the same scale every run, topped by the site's best: an unshaded plane facing the equator at its best tilt. Choose All roofs or Custom surfaces between two tilts; the map and the figures follow at once, without running again. The card reads the selected area, the solar energy falling on it in a year and its average.

The sun and sky are the PVGIS 5.3 typical year for the site, from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (satellite data for 2005–2023 over Europe, Africa and most of Asia), split into direct, circumsolar, sky and horizon light with the Perez model. While it loads the card waits; when PVGIS can't be reached it offers a relative map — each surface as a share of an open roof under a cloudless sky, with no energy figures, because a cloudless sky overstates them. Method on the card names every source.

Panels

Surface coverage lays real modules on the brightest spots first — those that get at least 80 % of the site's best — and Efficiency sets their power. The card reads their number and peak power, their area, their output in a year after reflection, heat and system losses, and the yield for each kWp. Under Advanced: the module's size and orientation, the setbacks, the system losses, the bar, and tilted rows on flat roofs, facing the equator and spaced clear of each other's shade.

Edit panels places them by hand: tap a panel to take it away, or a free spot to add one, or draw a rectangle or a polygon on any roof or façade and it fills with panels. Panels the layout placed, panels you drew and panels you took away look different on the building, and hovering a spot says what a panel there would make. Your edits stay put when you change the module or the coverage; Reset panels clears them.

What the panels make and are worth

Under the panels: the CO₂ avoided, the savings in a year and the simple payback, read with the site's country's grid, tariff and installed cost — each figure named with its source, and each one yours to change under Costs and tariff. Then the year by month, and a breakdown by orientation and by building.

History, downloads and the report

Every run is listed in History with its date, level and status. View result paints a past result back onto the model without computing it again, and says when the model has changed since. A Solar energy result keeps its surfaces, its panels and its costs: change them on a past result and the run is updated in place. The history is kept in this browser and mirrored to the server, so another browser signed into the same account sees the same runs once they have synced.

• Image (PNG) — the 3D view with the painted result, the key figures and the legend underneath.
• Data (CSV) — one row per point of the painted result, with its coordinates and value. Solar energy offers Data (Excel) instead — a workbook of the summary, the months, the breakdown, every panel, the measured points and every assumption with its source — and Data (CSV, zip), the same tables with every measured point and a note on the units.
• Report (PDF) — a one-page report with the view, the figures, the inputs and the data sources; for Noise, a compliance report with an appendix (Insulation and the noise report); for Solar energy, a five-page report: the summary, the roof plan with the panels, the year month by month, the building from each side, and the method and sources. ProSync only; each report costs 10 credits from the Render wallet, charged when you download it.