The gap between the lift planning tools available to building professionals today and those available even ten years ago is substantial. A decade ago, simulation-based elevator analysis was a specialist activity requiring expensive software licences, significant expertise to operate, and considerable time to produce results. Today, cloud-based platforms have made professional-grade simulation accessible to architects, engineers, and lift consultants at a fraction of the previous cost and time investment, with outputs that include not just performance data but 3D visualisations and BIM-ready models.
This transformation has been driven by the development of elevator design software that integrates the full workflow of elevator planning — from traffic analysis through design optimisation to documentation and BIM output — in a single accessible platform. Understanding what these tools now make possible, and how they change the practice of elevator planning, is useful context for any building professional involved in projects with significant vertical transportation requirements.
What Modern Elevator Design Software Makes Possible
The most significant capability that modern elevator design software has democratised is simulation-based traffic analysis. Traffic simulation — modelling the movement of individual passengers through a digital representation of the building and its elevator system — produces performance predictions that are substantially more accurate than simplified calculation methods for complex buildings and non-standard traffic profiles.
Until recently, accessing this level of analysis required engagement with specialist lift consultants operating expensive proprietary software, which added cost and time to the process and was typically reserved for large or complex projects where the stakes justified the investment. Cloud-based platforms have changed this dynamic: engineers and architects can now access simulation-grade analysis directly, for a subscription cost that is accessible at any project scale.
The Lift and Escalator Industry Association LEIA represents the UK’s vertical transportation sector and provides the professional framework within which elevator design tools are applied. As the industry’s trade and advisory body, LEIA works with its members — covering manufacturers, consultants, installers, and maintenance organisations — to promote the standards and best practices that professional elevator design should follow.
Elevator Performance Criteria: The Design Target
Elevator performance criteria are the benchmarks against which traffic analysis results are evaluated. They vary by building type, reflecting the different traffic patterns and occupant expectations that characterise offices, residential buildings, hotels, hospitals, and other uses. Professional elevator design software applies these criteria automatically for standard building types, relieving the user of the need to research and manually input the appropriate benchmarks for each project.
For office buildings, the primary performance criteria typically specify that the system should achieve a handling capacity of at least 12 to 15% of the building’s population per five minutes during up-peak, and that average waiting times should not exceed 25 to 30 seconds for standard-quality systems. Higher-specification buildings command tighter criteria. Residential buildings, where traffic patterns are less concentrated and occupant tolerance for longer waiting times is greater, typically apply less stringent criteria, though these must still be met consistently for the building to function satisfactorily.
Performance criteria for destination dispatch systems differ from those applied to conventional group control, reflecting the improved handling capacity that destination dispatch provides through its passenger grouping algorithm. Software that automatically applies the appropriate criteria for the control system type, rather than requiring the user to select and input the correct benchmarks manually, reduces the risk of design errors arising from applying the wrong criteria to the wrong system type.
The Expert System: From Elevator Analysis to Optimal Design
The most transformative capability in modern elevator design software is not the simulation itself — which, while more accessible than before, is still a relatively complex activity — but the expert system that automates the design optimisation process on the basis of simulation results.
Traditional elevator planning required the designer to specify a configuration, run the analysis, evaluate the results against performance criteria, adjust the configuration, and repeat the process until a satisfactory solution was found. This iterative process was time-consuming and, because each iteration was manually specified, was inevitably limited in the range of configurations evaluated. The designer’s intuition and experience determined which configurations were tested, which meant that genuinely optimal solutions were sometimes missed because the analyst never thought to test them.
An expert system automates this process. Given the building’s parameters — tenancy type, number of floors, population, core dimensions, and the value of floor space — the system systematically evaluates a large number of potential configurations and ranks them according to their performance and efficiency. The designer receives not just the result of a single configuration analysis but a comprehensive view of the design space, with the optimal solution clearly identified and the trade-offs between alternatives made transparent.
Visualisation and BIM Output: Communicating the Design
Professional elevator planning produces two types of output beyond the numerical performance analysis: visualisation of the system in operation, and BIM models of the elevator geometry for integration into the project’s overall Building Information Model.
3D visualisation allows the designer and project team to observe how passengers and elevator cars move through the building under simulated traffic conditions. Colour-coded waiting times make queue formation immediately visible; the movement patterns of elevator cars illustrate the efficiency of the dispatch algorithm. This visual representation communicates the system’s performance in a way that performance tables and statistics cannot, and it provides a compelling format for client presentations.
BIM output in IFC format allows the elevator system geometry — shafts, pits, machine rooms, lobbies, and the principal components of the lift system — to be incorporated directly into the project’s BIM environment without manual re-entry of dimensional data. This eliminates a source of coordination errors and ensures that the elevator geometry used in the structural, mechanical, and architectural models is consistent with the design produced by the traffic analysis.
Final Thoughts
Modern elevator design software has transformed the practice of lift planning by making simulation-based analysis, expert system optimisation, 3D visualisation, and BIM output accessible within an integrated workflow that building professionals can operate directly. The result is better-designed elevator systems, produced more efficiently, with better documentation and coordination than the previous generation of tools allowed. For professionals seeking to understand the technical foundation of what this software produces, the AdSimulo elevator university resources provide a clear introduction to the principles and methods behind modern lift traffic analysis.
