Where infrared.city fits
3,204,804 simulations run on Infrared Core (as of 29 Oct 2026).
infrared.city runs 12 models from one engine, Infrared Core, among them wind, wind comfort, sun, daylight, radiant heat and felt heat (UTCI). It works on real 3D building and terrain meshes, in a browser app, through an API and SDK, and in plugins for Grasshopper, QGIS and ArcGIS. Felt heat for 1 km² takes about 5 s once the geometry is uploaded, and 400 km² took 44 s as four 100 km² runs in parallel. Run times are not like for like across tools: area, grid, simulated hours and physics differ. Sun, sky and radiant heat come from ray tracing. Wind comes from an AI model trained on CFD results, not from a CFD run for each request.
- You need heat and wind results for a whole district or city, across many options.
- You run studies from your own tools through a public API and SDK, or in Grasshopper, QGIS or ArcGIS.
- You need an hourly city layer for a digital twin, or 2050 weather.
Use both
Keep site planning in Forma and Revit. Use infrared.city for the area around the site, for many options at city scale, for the live layer and for runs from your own scripts.
Facts side by side
| infrared.city | Autodesk Forma | |
|---|---|---|
| Outputs | 12 models, among them wind, wind comfort, sun, daylight, radiant heat and felt heat (UTCI) | Perceived temperature on site from sun hours, daylight potential and wind exposure |
| Run time | About 5 s for 1 km² of felt heat (UTCI, 08 to 18 h, geometry uploaded, measured); 400 km² in 44 s (four runs in parallel) | Microclimate in Revit: results "typically display in 4-10 seconds" (Tech Preview) |
| Runs as | Cloud: browser app, API and SDK, plugins | Forma, and Revit as a Forma connected client |
The run times are not like for like: Autodesk states no area or time window for its figure.
The infrared.city values repeat the full comparison. Each value for Autodesk Forma comes from the sources below.
Sources
- Autodesk help: Forma Microclimate Analysis (Tech Preview) in Revit , accessed 30 Oct 2026.
- Autodesk Forma blog: microclimate analysis (2023) , accessed 30 Oct 2026.