Just two short years ago, we started a LinkedIn group called IES VE Users. The goal was to have a central location on the platform for users of our <Virtual Environment> suite of sustainable building performance analysis products (VE-Ware, VE-Toolkits, VE-Gaia or VE-Pro). Somewhere to share ideas and thoughts – anything from BIM to green building, Revit or SketchUp to energy analysis.
We were hoping people would start to use it as a place to collaborate. A way to meet others using our software and answer questions about it, performance analysis and related building physics in real time.
And we are overwhelmed just a few years later! Our group has grown to more than 1,000 members. We’ve got architects, designers, engineers and consultants.
The comments and posts that come from other group members are interesting and drive discussion, but we want more… so please join in and participate.
Popular discussions have been about natural ventilation, use of our software to undertake LEED Energy modeling, BREEAM Daylighting and feedback from conferences.
So join our group! And start a discussion. We’d love to hear what you have to say.
Our group is also a great way to stay up-to-date on the latest IES announcements, including trips around the world by our staff, product updates and promotions
As you’re probably aware, a sustainable design revolution is underway in the building industry, and the use of performance analysis (climate, daylighting, energy, airflow) is a vital component – creating understanding of the impact of different strategies on energy consumption and other environmental metrics. Ultimately helping to shape designs that meet sustainable goals (BREEAM, LEED) and go beyond to carbon neutral.
In achieving these targets the importance of analysis inclusion right from the early design stages is becoming increasingly recognised, with the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlighting that the building sector offered the best mitigation opportunities, and that:
> “An integrated design approach is required to ensure that architectural elements and engineering systems work effectively together.”
> “At early design stages, key decisions usually made by the architect can greatly influence subsequent opportunities to reduce building energy use.”
> “New software based design tools can provide good design techniques, …and virtual testing…”
This has left many with unanswered questions, such as:
> What analysis should I do when?
> What do the numbers mean?
> How can analysis inform the design process?
> What about climate?
> Will this help me incorporate passive/hybrid strategies?
We’re planning on covering top tips and rules of thumb in an interactive half-day format; teaching architects, engineers and other professionals within the built environment how to better understand and visualise performance analysis within an integrated design process.
The main objectives include creating a better understanding of climate data and key weather variables, how to recognise opportunities to incorporate passive/hybrid strategies, as well as being able to ‘step into the numbers’ and interpret and understand analysis metrics within the design process and in real buildings.
The course has been developed by the head of our Sustainable Initiatives team Richard Quincey, a former Director of Building Sciences at Gifford, and a Partner at Max Fordham Associates.
We’re trialling it in London, UK during October 2009 – please email nicola.hilliard@iesve.com if you’re interested in attending.
Ok, so I am back with some tips and tricks for Google SketchUp! This blog will show you how to import a model from the SU warehouse for use within the VE. Just think of the possibilities. Take any building you like from the warehouse, and within a couple of hours, you could be doing full blown energy assessment, daylight analyses, natural ventilation feasibility studies, even LEED compliance!
So…. how do we do it?
1. Open SU – bit obvious this one
2. Go to the SU warehouse under the file menu
3. Browse the models or type in your favourite building in the search field
4. Download the model directly into your SU
5. Now, generally these models will come in as components or groups. As you may have noticed, the plug-in does have the facility to recognise groups and components. It can explode them and scan for fully enclosed volumes which can then be considered eligible for any subsequent analysis. However, the majority of models in the warehouse do not have fully enclosed volumes, so when the plug-in scans the components or groups, the rooms will not be found. So… in this case, we need to manually explode the components first, then add in any necessary surfaces to fully enclose the shape, then run the room scan.
6. So, highlight the building, right click and choose explode. Most of the time, this may need to be done a couple of times and there may be a ground plane/Google earth map that needs to be unlocked first too. This will be shown in red so right click and unlock this.
7. Once the building is completely exploded, look for surfaces that need to be added. The ones I have tried are massing models that just need a bottom surface added to fully enclose, but it depends on the complexity of the model.
8. Then, add in any detail you want in terms of glazing etc that may have not been included and check the opacities of surfaces are correct. Remember the rules for the opacity of the materials -
0% - hole
1-99% - transparent (for glass)
100% - opaque (for walls or doors)
9. Run the room scan – it should pick up the building as fully enclosed now. Ok, you can now go ahead and start analysing the building using the plugin after you enter the usual information for building type, constructions etc. This of course, as I said, is likely to be a massing model. If you want to start partitioning the space, this can be done in SU or, once you import it into the <VE>, the edit tools can be used to cut the building into floors and partitioned for a more accurate assessment of the building.
Here are a couple of samples of buildings from the Warehouse
What I’d like to do in my blog is provide some basic guidance with some simple hints and tips for taking your sexy SketchUp model one step further and running the likes of detailed energy consumption, Architecture 2030 Challenge benckmarking and LEED daylighting compliance analysis. Now, I’ve had a bit of experience using SketchUp over the last couple of months but not even close to some of you “super users” so please forgive me if some of this is old hat to you. However, and this is the point, there is a difference between the conventional way of drawing a SketchUp model, purely concerning the shell of the building and its aesthetics, and having individual rooms acknowledged for analysis eligibility.
Now, I am going to assume that you already know about the SketchUp plug-in and the room finding icons and so on and so forth (if not, please go to the SketchUp link on this website or go to www.youtube.com/IESVE). All I’d like to do is help you to get your model ready quickly and efficiently to streamline the process of analysing your building design.
Right, let’s cover the basics first, and then we can apply it to something relevant. You may have seen some of this in the literature, but I’ll assume you haven’t.
The first movie clip shows the basics of room creation and how the room finding algorithm finds spaces based on surfaces.
Once the 2nd room is extruded, you will see there is no floor. The fundamental rule for “rooms” to be acknowledged is they must be enclosed volumes. These have no floor, hence no rooms are found.
Drawing a line across the floor will then bound these spaces with the floor and also a partition wall. 2 rooms are found.
I don’t want a partition wall, so I’ll delete the surface. Woops! Only 1 room is found now.
I’ll draw the surface back in by adding a diagonal line to bound it, then delete the diagonal line.
This time, instead of deleting the surface, I’ll make the surface 0% opacity and it will be picked up as a partition, albeit an invisible one, but at least light, heat and air can pass through it. Ah ha! Now I have 2 rooms again.
Ok, so that fundamental rule is that to divide spaces into separate rooms, there must be a surface connecting them, then the levels of opacity will determine whether they are walls, windows, or holes.
0% hole
1-99% window
100% wall
Ok, let’s take that rule and apply it to my design.
1. We shall assume we have the floor plate but no individual spaces. If you want to know what the heating and cooling loads are for each of the rooms, not the whole floor because they have 1. Varying space usage and 2. Different orientations and hence varying solar penetration.
2. One of the spaces is in an open plan office but it’s very large so we want to split the space into perimeter and core, but maintain the space as open plan for solar tracking and heat/air transfer purposes.
3. So the steps shown in the 2nd movie are as follows.
a. Floorplate with no floor, no room found
b. Floor drawn, room found
c. Partition walls drawn to define enclosed office spaces.
d. Core and perimeter spaces drawn
e. Partition walls modified to have 0% opacity therefore in any subsequent analysis, light, heat and air can pass through into the adjacent space, but each room is considered its own entity from a load perspective.
The next step will be to run this model through the likes of VE-Ware (our free tool), the VE-Toolkits and modules within the full Virtual Environment. This will allow you to gauge its performance in terms of daylighting, airflow, energy and thermal comfort. And you thought your sexy SketchUp model was just for show eh. Wait ‘till my next blog.
