ENVI-met updates for version 6.0 Lightning (September 26)

Highlights

• Huge simulation performance improvements. Simulations run up to 10x faster now.
• General overhaul of all applications. Overall user workflow improvements and loading time decreases, for example in Spaces.
• Fast Thermal Comfort (Hourly or as Statistics). Quick estimations for pedestrian-level thermal-comfort results: Hourly UTCI values without a full simulation, plus a statistics module that aggregates UTCI thermal-stress over longer periods of months, seasons or year-long. EXCLUSIVE TO BUSINESS LICENSE TIER
• Wind Comfort: Assess pedestrian wind comfort directly in ENVI-met, with multi-directional analysis, exceedance probabilities and grades against recognised standards (NEN 8100, Lawson, Davenport). EXCLUSIVE TO BUSINESS LICENSE TIER
• Surrounding-area presets: Characterise the urban context upstream of your model with ready-made urban-climate-zone and land-cover presets, from open water and countryside through to dense city cores.
• Absolute air temperature is now the primary temperature output, with air pressure referenced to the actual site elevation rather than a fixed standard value. Potential temperature remains available in the result files.
• Building indoor climate & air-conditioning heat: Give individual buildings a controlled indoor temperature and decide whether their air-conditioning heat is rejected into the outdoor air, so the urban heat that air conditioning actually creates shows up in your results. Or allow automatic ventilation of buildings, so that building indoor temperatures are regulated based on outdoor and indoor conditions.
• Spin-up of the model: ENVI-met now runs a spin-up phase for soils, materials etc. that automatically derives their initial temperatures, replacing the previous manual soil temperature input.
• Smaller, standardized project files: Model area and database files now use a modern JSON format that is more compact, easier to manage and readable/writable by standardized routines.
• Simpler project setup: The scenario system has been retired, with automatic migration of existing projects. Along with the removal of the scenario system, ENVICentral and Monde apps were discontinued and removed from the software suite to improve clarity in the workflow. The reporting feature of ENVICentral now lives in Leonardo.

ENVI-core

Major Changes

• Faster, more robust simulations: Performance and stability improvements across the simulation kernel.
• Fast Thermal Comfort & statistics: Rapid pedestrian UTCI and mean-radiant-temperature calculations, plus a statistics module that summarises long periods into the standard UTCI thermal-stress categories. EXCLUSIVE TO BUSINESS LICENSE TIER
• Wind Comfort: Multi-direction wind-field analysis with exceedance probabilities, graded against the NEN 8100, Lawson and Davenport standards. EXCLUSIVE TO BUSINESS LICENSE TIER
• Surrounding-area presets: Characterise the urban context upstream for each model domain border with ready-made urban-climate-zone and land-cover presets, from open water and countryside through to dense city cores.
• Absolute air temperature is now the primary temperature in result files, listed ahead of potential temperature, and air pressure is referenced to the actual site elevation rather than a fixed standard value. Scripts that read result variables by position need to be updated.
• Building indoor climate & air-conditioning heat: Set an indoor temperature per building and choose whether the heat its air conditioning removes is released into the surrounding air, letting you study the outdoor warming that cooling demand produces. Allow natural ventilation of buildings based on thermal indoor/outdoor thresholds and usage periods.
• Spin-up of the model: ENVI-met now runs a spin-up phase for soils, materials etc. that automatically derives their initial temperatures, replacing the previous manual soil temperature input.
• Extended atmospheric inflow column: The vertical profile that feeds the model is now computed as a full 1-D atmospheric column reaching 4 km, explicitly representing night-time inversions, the residual layer, large-scale sinking motion and the Earth's rotation. This extends the model's capabilities for night-time and early-morning studies.
• New output variables: A specific PM10 particulate output, a more detailed breakdown of the radiation reaching a pedestrian (direct solar, reflected/diffuse environment and longwave components of the mean radiant temperature), and Wind Comfort / Fast Thermal Comfort result files.

Minor Changes

• Improved longwave radiation physics, including carbon dioxide as a separate absorbing gas — and a markedly faster radiation calculation at the same time.
• The new Surrounding Area settings also include the radiative effect of the surroundings (shading and longwave emission from the virtual skyline).
• Improved numerical stability across turbulence, radiation and pollutant calculations, including under night-time conditions.
• Faster radiation and shading calculations, with refined treatment of sloped terrain.
• Faster and more stable CO2 dispersion.
• Option to force background pollutant concentrations for sensitivity studies.
• Refinements to surface temperature, vegetation, radiation and wind-direction calculations.

ENVI-guide

Major Changes

• Set up Fast Thermal Comfort studies: Choose your datetime and configure the new modules in a few clicks. EXCLUSIVE TO BUSINESS LICENSE TIER
• Redesigned simulation-type selection: Simulation types are now grouped into clear sections (comprehensive simulation, human comfort analysis and environmental modules), each with a short description of what it does, so it is easier to pick the right one.
• Removal of legacy advanced settings that are now handled automatically by the model.
• Added building options regarding handling of air conditioning, usage times, and natural ventilation
• Soil temperature settings removed, as initial soil temperatures are now derived automatically during spin-up.

Minor Changes

• More reliable restoring of output folders and project settings when loading projects.
• FOX weather file generation from the Rhino plugin (run as a background task of ENVI-guide) is fully supported.

Spaces

Major Changes

• Surrounding Area: A modern replacement for the nesting-grids system. Describe the urban surroundings of your model for each border with urban structure presets, from open water to extremely dense urban. Surrounding areas of existing models will default to the compact mid-rise class.
• Air Conditioning: A new editor to give each building a controlled indoor temperature and decide whether its air-conditioning heat is rejected to the outdoor air.
• Noticeably smoother editing and navigation in large 3D models.

Minor Changes

• The 3D building editor now handles tall structures in full.
• A clearer plant preview that always shows the 3D-plant's full extent.
• A range of stability and rendering fixes for a more dependable editing experience.

Albero

Major Changes

• More detailed tree parameters regarding photosynthesis rates can be selected and modified.

Minor Changes

• Mean leaf-area information is now shown in the parameter overview.
• A robustness and performance pass for smoother sliders, faster filtering and a more stable 3D view.
• Input validation and crash-safety improvements across the plant-editing tools.
• Plant scaling is now saved reliably — scaled plants keep their dimensions after you restart the app.

BIO-met

Major Changes

• Faster handling of large datasets: Improved data handling (including NetCDF) with quick access reading for much faster processing of large files.

Minor Changes

• Personal parameters (age, gender, clothing, activity) are now fully integrated into dynamic comfort along movement routes, with an improved Dynamic Comfort interface.
• Comfort indices now use absolute air temperature, consistent with the primary temperature output of the simulation. The difference between absolute and potential air temperature is negligible for most sites.
• On complex terrain, all comfort indices now consistently sample the meteorological fields at a fixed height above the local ground surface.
• Hardened comfort calculations (PET / PMV safety caps) and more robust person-position handling.
• Refinements to the PET calculation module.

Leonardo

Major Changes

• Open NetCDF files directly alongside the familiar EDX/EDT format — including files that combine atmosphere and façade data — with no conversion step.
• Reporting feature now lives in Leonardo, making it the one place for analysis, visualization and reporting processes after ENVIcentral has now been retired.

Minor Changes

• The legacy EDX-to-NetCDF converter has been retired, as NetCDF has been written by default in every simulation in recent versions.
• Faster data extraction and 3D navigations thanks to better value caching.
• A new one-click option to put two maps on a common, automatically scaled legend so they can be compared directly.
• Inverted color palettes now display as expected.

DBmanager

Major Changes

• JSON databases: ENVI-met databases are now shipped in a new, standard-conform JSON format.

Minor Changes

• Improved support for regional number formats and language settings.
• New validation for air gap and soil properties, so invalid material definitions are caught as you enter them rather than during a simulation.
• Fixes to clipboard handling, data export and dialog validation.

A Refreshed Materials & Plants Database

• ENVI-met 6.0 ships with a cleaned-up and modernised materials and plants library: outdated entries have been removed, soil and material properties updated, and tree definitions revised to better match typical urban dimensions, giving you better, more consistent starting points for every project. Legacy items are removed to reduce loading times of all apps. They are replaced by default items during simulation loading in the ENVIcore, if not replaced by the user beforehand

ENVI-met updates for version 5.9.0 (December 25)

UX

• ENVI-core: Further reduced simulation times up to 50% compared to 5.8.0 (depending on model area size) through optimized background processes
• BIO-met: Reductions in calculation time through optimized background processes

UI

• Albero: Added possibility to change photosynthesis parameters
• DBManager: Made Albedo of natural soils editable

Bugfixes

• ENVI-core: Albedo of natural soils fixed
• ENVI-core: Fixed a major bug in conservation of energy - this leads to noticeable changes in the results
• ENVI-core: Fixed a rare bug causing large/long simulations with many outputs to crash
• ENVI-guide: Fixed a bug when re-saving existing .SIMX –> additional .SIMX extension is not added to the file anymore

Other Changes

• ENVI-core: Changed the heat exchange method between building walls and air to a more accurate approach

ENVI-met updates for version 5.8.0 (May 25)

For everyone

UX

• ENVI-core: Reduced simulation times by 20-50% (depending on model area size) through optimized background processes
• Leonardo: Decreased loading times when opening outputs (especially larger models)
• ENVI-Guide: Options for automatical download of ERA5 weather data and search for typical days. Direct import in SIMX files.
• NetCDF libraries are now bundled with ENVI-met and no longer need to be installed separately
• NetCDF files are automatically generated during simulation
• Nesting cells are per default not written into the outputs anymore
• Added the option to opt-out of email notifications through a tag in the .SIMX

UI

• Added “Advanced Settings” toggle in Leonardo and Spaces to access older options

Bugfixes

• Leonardo: Fixed the display of wind vectors
• ENVI-core: Fixed a greening module issue and corrected the amount of reflected shortwave radiation
• OAuth: Fixed a bug preventing to log in again after PC went into stand-by

For business users

• Web-Based Reporting Tool: Easily upload your simulation data to your new personal project cloud, to explore it through our new interactive visualization tool, and to generate professional reports tailored for stakeholders
• Running isolated modules: ENVI-met now allows single-module simulations for solar radiation and wind. This enables focused environmental analyses without running a full holistic model, significantly reducing simulation time when only specific factors are needed

ENVI-met updates for version 5.7.2 (February 25)

UX/UI

• Simplified the UI in Leonardo
• Introduction of Single Sign-On
• Added more output variables

Bugfixes

• Spaces: Small bugfixes
• Leonardo: Min/Max Values in 3D were not displayed
• Albero: New tree's emissivity was always 0 when created
• Fixed a bug in shortwave radiation in greening module
• Fixed issues with Chinese characters in project and file names
• Waterspray usage fixed

ENVI-met updates for version 5.7.1 (December 24)

UX/UI

• Reintroducing bitmap feature to Spaces. Please note that using bitmaps for digitizing in Spaces is not a recommended workflow. It is much easier and more reasonable to load the same image file in QGIS, digitize the model area there, and export it in any given resolution by using the Geodata2ENVI-met plugin.
• Workspace and project changes are now reflected in the project lists in each program directly

Bugfixes

• UTF8 characters, e.g. Chinese language, are now supported again for project names
• Change of workspace is now possible again
• Small bugfixes in path handling regarding scenarios and projects

ENVI-met updates for version 5.7 (November 24)

UX/UI

• The graphical user interface has been overhauled for better useability
• New file and project management system: “Central”
• Better integration with our QGIS, Rhino and SketchUp plugins
• Added sample project to learn more about the model

Core model updates

• Improved stability for simulations (added fail safes)
• Addition of PET and UTCI surface output variables to ENVIcore

ENVI-met updates for version 5.6.1 (Winter 23/24)

HeadQuarter/Workspace Manager

• Bugfix: Workspace and projects could not be created properly