The terminology around vertical transportation software can be confusing, particularly for building professionals who encounter it intermittently rather than as a core part of their daily practice. Traffic analysis software, lift simulation software, lift design software, elevator planning tools — these terms are sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes to describe meaningfully different capabilities. Understanding what each type of tool does, and where the boundaries between them lie, is useful context for any building designer, architect, or developer who needs to make informed decisions about vertical transportation at the design stage.
For those looking for a platform that integrates these capabilities comprehensively, AdSimulo traffic analysis software combines lift traffic simulation, expert system design optimisation, 3D visualisation, and BIM output in a single application designed specifically for engineers, architects, and lift consultants.
What Traffic Analysis Software Does
Traffic analysis software, in the vertical transportation context, models the movement of passengers through a building’s lift system to predict how the system will perform under specified demand conditions. The core function is simulation: creating a digital model of the building, its population, and its lift configuration, and running that model through a representative traffic scenario to generate performance statistics.
The outputs of a traffic analysis simulation typically include average waiting time, the time from pressing the call button to the elevator arriving; average journey time, the total time from leaving a floor to arriving at the destination; handling capacity, the percentage of the building population served per five-minute period during peak demand; and interval, the average time between successive elevator arrivals at a given floor. These metrics are evaluated against performance criteria appropriate for the building type to determine whether the proposed configuration is adequate.
More sophisticated traffic analysis tools also model specific traffic patterns — up-peak traffic during morning arrivals in office buildings, down-peak during departures, inter-floor traffic throughout the day — and the behaviour of different elevator control systems, including conventional group control and more advanced destination dispatch systems where passengers input their destination before entering the car.
What Lift Software Covers
Lift software is a broader category that encompasses not just traffic analysis but the full range of computational tools used in lift system design, specification, and management. This includes calculation tools for structural and mechanical elements, specification tools for lift components and systems, maintenance management software for building operators, and the integrated design platforms that combine traffic analysis with expert system optimisation and documentation output.
The most capable contemporary lift software platforms go beyond traffic analysis to provide an end-to-end design workflow. This means accepting building parameters as input, running the traffic analysis, optimising the lift configuration through a systematic evaluation of alternatives, generating professional reports that document the analysis and its conclusions, producing 3D visualisations of the lift system in operation, and outputting the lift system geometry as a BIM model in IFC format.
CIBSE’s Guide D4: Lift Traffic Design Using Simulation provides the current definitive guidance on simulation-based lift traffic design, covering the methodology, the performance criteria, and the standards that professional simulation work should meet. The 2025 edition reflects the most current understanding of simulation practice in the vertical transportation field.
The Distinction Between Simulation and Calculation
A fundamental distinction in lift traffic analysis is between simulation-based and calculation-based approaches. Both have a place in professional practice, but they serve different purposes and have different accuracy characteristics.
Calculation-based methods apply simplified analytical models to estimate lift system performance. They are fast, transparent, and well-understood, making them useful for initial feasibility work and for straightforward building types where the simplifying assumptions underlying the calculations are well-matched to the building’s actual characteristics. Their limitation is that they cannot capture the full complexity of multi-lift systems, non-standard traffic patterns, or the behaviour of advanced control systems.
Simulation-based methods model the system’s behaviour directly, tracing individual passenger journeys through a statistical representation of the building’s population and demand patterns. They are more computationally intensive but produce significantly more accurate performance predictions, particularly for complex buildings, non-standard traffic profiles, and systems using advanced dispatch algorithms. As computing power has increased and simulation software has become more accessible, simulation has moved from a specialist technique to the preferred method for serious lift traffic analysis.
Why Building Designers Need to Understand Both
Building designers — architects, developers, and project managers — do not need to be expert lift traffic analysts, but they do need sufficient understanding of the tools and methods to commission analysis intelligently, to interpret its results, and to make informed decisions about when detailed simulation is warranted versus when simplified calculation suffices.
The decision to invest in simulation-based traffic analysis is most clearly justified for tall buildings where the consequences of an inadequate lift configuration are proportionally significant, for complex mixed-use developments with non-standard traffic patterns, for projects using advanced destination dispatch systems whose performance cannot be accurately predicted by calculation, and for any situation where the client or regulatory environment requires a demonstrable, auditable performance analysis.
Understanding what the software produces — and what its outputs mean in practical terms for the building’s occupants — allows building designers to engage meaningfully with the analysis rather than simply accepting the lift consultant’s recommendation without the context to evaluate it.
Final Thoughts
Traffic analysis software and lift software serve a building design process that has become both more sophisticated and more demanding as building height, occupancy density, and performance expectations have all increased. For building professionals who want to understand the tools that underpin professional vertical transportation design, familiarising yourself with what the best lift software platforms provide — and what the outputs they generate mean in practice — is time well spent at the outset of any project with significant vertical transportation requirements.
