Autodesk Forma

Analysis you can trust.

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Analysis overview

Autodesk Forma serves as a comprehensive tool that lets you leverage an array of analyses to evaluate how your building design aligns with desired living qualities, metrics, and sustainability goals. By harnessing the data-driven insights from these analyses, you can efficiently iterate and optimize your design proposals accordingly. This capability of Forma is easy to use, making it valuable not only for experts but also for anyone involved in early-stage design workflows.

On this page you’ll find an overview of the analyses available within Autodesk Forma, their benefits, as well as links to any relevant documentation or articles. For more information, please visit our Help center*.

The benefits of Autodesk Forma's analyses


Forma offers access to a wide range of analyses capabilities and empowers you to adopt outcome-based design principles as early as the initial planning phase itself. You can leverage the analyses to:

  • Uncover the hidden information of your site and easily access insights on how your design decisions influence outcomes right while you design.
  • Free up more time for creative exploration by eliminating tedious tasks and feedback loops involved in securing preliminary environmental data.
  • Utilize the cloud-computed real-time analysis and its data-driven results, to quickly iterate and explore multiple design options, enabling you to confidently select the best proposals.
  • Easily collaborate and visually convey your site's potential and conditions across all involved stakeholders.

Discover our analyses


Select an option below to find out more

Area analysis | Sun hours analysis |  Daylight potential analysis | Wind analysis  | Microclimate analysis | Rapid operational energy (beta) | Noise analysis (beta) | Solar energy analysis (beta) | Embodied Carbon analysis (in tech preview) | Analyses by extensions

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Area Analysis


Quickly calculate various area metrics that are relevant to your site. The metrics are customizable so that you can control how the calculations are performed and ensure the resulting numbers are in accordance with your specific needs. Additionally, there are location-based default calculations for many geographies so that you start off with metrics that are appropriate in the area where you operate. More details can be found in the Area metrics section within the technical documentation.

Read Technical documentation*

Read Technical documentation*

Sun hours analysis


The sun hours analysis identifies the number of hours a certain point of a project is exposed to direct sunlight. The analysis takes into consideration shading caused by buildings and/or terrain surrounding the site to accurately assess the hours of sun a site and building receives. Users can set specific dates for sun hour for their studies.

READ AN INTRODUCTION HERE*.

Technical Documentation*

Daylight potential analysis

Using the daylight potential analysis will give you valuable insights into the daylight performance of your buildings, highlighting facade areas with inappropriate levels of light that you might need to change in order to improve. 

The analysis results provide a rating (Sky Component score) for areas where larger windows or changes in layout are needed to compensate for less optimal daylight conditions, or areas where it will be difficult or impossible to achieve reasonable daylight conditions assuming conventionally sized rooms

READ AN INTRODUCTION HERE*

Technical documentation*

Wind analysis

A powerful tool for early phase assessment of your site for various effects caused by wind. The Wind analysis was developed with consideration for the quality requirements in the London wind guidelines. These guidelines were chosen due to the high level of technical details relevant for early phase wind comfort assessment on urban sites, which agrees with relevant academic literature. To ensure reliability, the analysis has been benchmarked against several engineering consultancies as well as academic benchmarks. 

Introduction to wind analysis*

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More information 

Autodesk Forma’s Wind Analysis leverages the following methods and sources: 

  • 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) 
  • OpenFOAM 
  • Steady-state RANS 
  • k-Epsilon turbulence model 
  • Global Wind Atlas (for wind roses) 
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Read Technical Documentation*

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Rapid wind 

Since the wind analyses takes time to compute, we have developed a machine learning based surrogate model that can give immediate, approximate results. This model is trained on our own analysis data. It enables you to get directionally correct feedback on your design changes in real time, seeing how the wind situation is impacted every time you move a building a few meters or tweak the shape a little bit. When you reach a design option that is favorable, you can then run the proper numerical physics-based wind analysis to get even more accurate results. 

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Introduction to pedestrian wind comfort*

Microclimate analysis

Microclimate analysis provides a way to quickly, easily, and accurately evaluate the thermal comfort of outdoor spaces. It combines our sun, wind, and sky exposure, and numerous localized weather and climate data to create a comprehensive microclimate map of your site. Additionally, you can also perform tests for climate change resilience by creating future scenarios that might apply to your site. 

INTRODUCTION TO MICROCLIMATE ANALYSIS*

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More information

To represent the “feels-like” temperature, the analysis uses the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), which is the a commonly used thermal comfort metric and widely considered to be both an accurate and respected indicator. Weather data, which is obtained from the ERA5 dataset provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, includes information such as solar radiation, and cloud cover. Wind roses are retrieved from the Global Wind Atlas. 

Academic paper: An introduction to UTCI 

Copernicus Climate Change Service

Rapid Operational Energy analysis (Beta)

Rapid operational energy analysis predicts operational energy in real time, helping you design with energy efficiency in mind from day one. 

In the analysis you can modify a selection of key design factors for energy consumption – including geometry, window-to-wall ratio, and roof and wall construction types – and immediately see how those interrelated factors impact predicted energy use intensity (kWh/m2/year).  

Introduction to rapid energy analysis*
INTRODUCTION TO RAPID ENERGY ANALYSIS*

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More information

The analysis uses machine learning, whereby a huge dataset of building models was first analyzed with Autodesk Insights complex energy simulation engine for energy usage (InsightX Energy Analysis) against a variety of building factors. These results were used to train a machine learning model that accurately predicts energy use. The energy predictions are ±5% from the actual simulations. 

Noise analysis (Beta)

Noise analysis is a powerful tool for decision makers to address problems related to environmental noise. 

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More information 

This noise analysis was developed and tested with input from Sweco. The noise analysis in Autodesk Forma is developed based on the Common Noise Assessment Methods in Europe (CNOSSOS-EU).  This method is developed by the European Commission. It was also based on a preliminary version of the ISO 17534-4 (ISO 17534-4).  While still under development, the ISO 17534-4 standard contains test cases similarly to those in ISO 17534-3. 

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Introduction to Noise analysis*

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Rapid noise

Rapid noise  

Since the noise analyses takes time to compute, we have developed a machine learning based surrogate model that can give immediate, approximate results trained on our own analysis. This enables you to get directionally correct feedback on your design changes in real time, seeing how the noise situation is impacted every time you move a building a few meters or tweak the shape a little bit. When you reach a design you like, you should run the proper numerical physics-based noise analysis to get even more accurate results.

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Article on rapid noise analysis in Autodesk Forma*

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Solar Energy analysis (Beta)

The solar energy analysis in Forma lets you evaluate the potential of generating electricity using solar energy on your building site. The tool can help you identify which facades or roofs have the most exposure to sun radiation. Sun radiation analysis can be used for several usecases, amongst them, as a tool to design better passive solar design, but either shading or capturing heat in thermal mass. The analysis also allows you to estimate the annual potential electricity production from solar panels based on the solar radiation. 

INTRODUCTION TO SOLAR ENERGY ANALYSIS*

Feature overview video

Embodied Carbon analysis (In tech preview)

In this analysis, users can define site-wide analytical properties, as well as those specific to individual buildings. This includes parameters such as building program, structure, envelope factors such as cladding and window-to-wall ratio, and other advanced settings. Running Forma's embodied carbon analysis provides almost immediate results, including a life-cycle embodied carbon number (shown in tCO2e) and visual aids like color-coded buildings that detail carbon intensity by category. These outputs allow users to refine and compare different building designs and parameters, enabling them to finalize a concept that aligns more closely with their existing goals. 

READ AN INTRODUCTION HERE*

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Analysis Extensions

Autodesk Forma offers third parties the opportunity to extend the capabilities of Forma by building analysis extensions on top of the existing capabilities. These extensions can expand on existing capabilities, or tailor results to local markets' requirements or even introduce completely new sets of inputs and outputs to analyze.

LINK TO DOCUMENTATION ON EXTENSIONS

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