Welcome to the website for free and open-source VI-Suite; an integrated set of building environmental analysis tools.

The VI-Suite uses the free, open-source Blender 3D content creation suite as a host to provide an innovative nodal interface for various types of building environmental performance simulation. The VI-Suite leverages capabilities within Blender to create sun paths and shadow studies, and controls the external applications Radiance, EnergyPlus and matplotlib to conduct lighting analysis, energy performance analysis, advanced natural ventilation network creation, glare analysis and wind rose generation.

An article describing the VI-Suite has been published in 'Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards'. As the article is open-access a link to the full text can be found at http://rdcu.be/vRj5. The article reference can be used to cite the VI-Suite in research work.

The bibtex formatted reference can be downloaded here.

With the links below you can also find out more about, and download, the VI-Suite.    

The creation of the VI-Suite would not be possible without the work of the Blender Foundation, and many thanks go to them for creating and distributing Blender. 

Thanks also go to:

• The University of Brighton for part funding this work with a sabbatical award.
• The Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory for creating Radiance. 
• The US Department of Energy for creating EnergyPlus 
• The National Renewable Energy Laboratory for providing Radiance and EnergyPlus binaries 
• The Matplotlib team, and John Hunter in particular, for creating and releasing matplotlib. 
• Continuum Analytics for producing the Python Framework Anaconda 
• The Kivy Organization for releasing the UI framework Kivy.