The first step with this project is to assign materials to the various layers. This can be somewhat time consuming if you're not sure what materials are used and/or you're not sure what geometry each layer represents.

Hint: Use Designer's Layer tab (upper right on the Project tab) to isolate one layer at a time. This can be very helpful in understanding each layer.

Rollover the image to see a quick daylighting rendering performed after the initial materials were selected. Calculation time (3 minutes).

Calc Settings: Fast Basic with minimum patch size = 5 feet, maximum patch size = 25 feet.

After some additional material refinement (and dropping in a few trees from Designer's library), the model is beginning to take shape - at least from the outside.

Rollover the image to view a hybrid rendering - perfect for Shadow Analysis.

Calculation time = 3 minutes (halted convergence at 72% as we're only interested in the outside right now).

Calc Settings: As above with minimum patch size = 3 feet, maximum patch size = 25 feet difference threshold = 70%