BIMkeeper visualizes sun and shadow in 3D viewer.

If you are going to buy a house, you want to be informed as detailed as possible on all the properties of the house. If it is an existing building, it is easy: you go there and have a look. For new buildings this is quite a challenge, because the house or complex is not there yet. In the past you were informed with brochures and floorplans. 

Our IFC-based 3D viewer makes it possible to look in detail to every single house or apartment in a project. From the outside or the inside. If you split levels, you can determine easily where the elevators are, the parking, the front door an more. You can actually zoom in on the whole building, or a specific apartment. In collaboration with BPD, bouwfonds property development, we have already realized several beautiful projects this way, like Wheermolen and La-Cour-Cantina (Ede)

Recently we worked on a realistic representation of sun and shade. It is now possible to see exactly if you have sunshine on your balcony or garden. Of course this differs during the year, so you can select any date and time. In the picture below, you can see that a building in the area (grey) is placed on it's exact location, to make the shade/sun calculation realistic. 

In our viewer, you can run an animation that shows you exactly sunrise and sunset and how the shadow moves in the hours that lie in between. So the height of the sun, the direction, time and day are displayed exactly in the viewer. Everything webbased of course. 

Challenge ahead: how to take higher buildings in the aerea into account. 

IRP bases all of its web development on the ISO 19650 standard for the development and full lifecycle of buildings. Formerly known as the BSI 1192-X. This standard has now been almost fully implemented in BIMkeeper.