In order to allow for the shading effect of surrounding objects, enter the Average Height and Average Distance that the Facade is from any large object facing your selected Façade.
Note: The Surrounding Buildings feature should only be applied when an entire Façade is selected (rather than specific surfaces). Facades/Surfaces may also have the same orientation but exist on different planes and so would be affected to different extents. This feature, to simulate surrounding objects that would cause a shading effect on the model, currently only affects the Daylighting results and not the Solar Loads.
Surrounding buildings modeled as Mass objects will affect both Solar Loads and Daylighting results. Surrounds may also be imported as linked files in version 7.0 and will also affect the results (older versions of the application do not support linked files).
