IES Blog

As a software developer the similarities between how we build and develop the software and how architects design buildings has always struck me. In this blog, I’d like to talk about how the architecture design concept of software engineering.

What is Software Architecture?

The software architecture is a structure which comprises of different elements, the external visible properties of these elements and relationships among them. It’s the organization process of defining a solution that meets all of the technical and operational requirements. It involves a series of decisions on a wide range of factors such as quality, performance, maintainability and overall success of the application.

Why is Architecture Important?

Like a complex building structure, software must have a solid foundation. Failing to consider key scenarios, design for common problems or to predict the long term consequence of a key decision can put the development work at risk. Poor architecture can make the software unstable, produce more bugs during coding phase and it is hard to support development for future business requirements.

The architecture design is an important phase of the whole development process; full consideration of user requirements, business goal and system ability, it draws a blueprint for the later work. At this stage, you should outline all the key scenarios in great details and identify all the possible pros and cons of each software attribute.

We should consider high level concerns instead of implementation details when designing architecture:

• How will the user be using the application?
• How the features of the application will benefit the user?
• How can the application be designed to be maintainable to meet the development schedule?

To understand the user requirements is the key to good architecture design, the software is just a service product which offers convenience and efficiency, all the design should be based on the consideration of those two factors.

The Goals of Architecture

An ideal architecture should be a perfect conversion between business requirements and technique requirements by understanding user cases and then defining a clear and neat way to implement those requirements by programming the software.

A good design is sufficiently flexible to be able to handle all of the user case studies and scenarios, both functional and quality requirements, efficient in implementation details.

The Principles of Architecture Design

Design the architecture with evolution in mind so that it will be able to adapt to requirements that are not fully known at the start of the design process, do not try to over engineer the architecture, and make assumptions that you can’t verify.

Instead you should keep your options open for future changes, identify the foundational parts of the architecture that represent the greatest risk if you get them wrong.

Key Architecture Principles

• Building software for change instead of building to last. There are always new requirements and feedbacks.
• Identifying critical decisions. Identify the areas where mistakes and further changes are most often made, getting these key engineering decisions right the first time so the design is more flexible.

Start with a base-line architecture to create the big picture, and then evolve the details and iteratively test and improve the architecture. Do not try to get every tiny detail right on the first attempt, get the big decision right first, and then focus on the details.

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Tags:Architects, Building, Engineers

The 8^th International Radiance Conference took place on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA from October 21^st through the 23^rd, 2009. The event was hosted by Christoph Reinhart and Kera Lagios of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Two staff members from IES Boston attended the event, Michelle Farrell and Angela Chan. In total about 80 professionals and students attended.

Radiance was originally developed with the majority of support coming from the U.S. Department of Energy, with supplementary support from the Swiss Federal Government. One of the lead developers, Greg Ward of Anyhere Software, also attended. There was discussion around the improvements that will be available in Radiance 4.0, including a “new parallel computation facility in rvu (formerly rview), and tools for annual daylight simulations with complex fenestration systems”.

While Radiance has been around for many years, it was primarily used by experts familiar with its interface and coding. Some of the presentations focused on how the tool is being integrated with other modelling, and even parametric, software tools. Christoph Reinhart, Kera Lagios, and Jeff Niemasz of the Harvard Graduate School of Design developed a toolbar for Rhino that links it with Radiance and Daysim. Through the use of Grasshopper, key parameters of the design could be changed, and the Radiance/Daysim results respond accordingly, allowing for “the creation of animated building performance simulation.”

Other presentations, such as one by David Smith of Buro Happold, focused on the presentation of Radiance results. After giving a basic introduction to coding, Smith showed how he used Flash in combination with Radiance output to create deliverables such as “simple animations, mapping data to models, and interactive design aids”. The deliverables that he presented show the power of what reports can now contain, making the printed report or image collection seem almost archaic. A truly inspiring presentation that shows what is possible when it comes to reports when you add a little creativity.

A version of Radiance, RadianceIES, is contained within the IES Virtual Environment suite. By using Radiance as part of the IES Virtual Environment, One can use RadianceIES with LightPro or FlucsPro, also both modules in the Virtual Environment, to visualize and analyze electrical lighting schemes using VE’s extensive library of luminaires, or by importing your own photometric files. Furthermore, one can link Radiance to ApacheSIM to account for daylighting dimming strategies when running an annual energy simulation. It is this connection between the modules in the Virtual Environment that makes the IES’ software suite so powerful.

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In this week’s blog I’d like to focus in on the potential of using the earth as an energy resource for buildings. In particular I’d like to look at the idea of incorporating underground labyrinths in a building’s design. These underground labyrinths are a type of thermal mass energy storage system and are not a new idea by any means but the use of the earth as an energy resource does tend to be overlooked.

Nature has used the earth as a way of creating a comfortable living environment even in the most severe external environment. For example the Barossa Termite, the great engineers that they are, build massive structures with fully integrated passive temperature control. So much so that they control the environment in which they live to within 1ºC throughout the year.

They use the mechanisms of thermal mass and evaporation in the main to control the temperature within their living environment. They construct underground chambers through which the outside air is drawn. This underground chamber is constructed to have a large surface area with the ground which cools the air on a hot day and warms it on a cool day. Even when this engineering marvel is exposed to extremely hot conditions the termites adapt and make the journey tens of metres down tunnels they have created to get to the water table to collect small quantities of water and bring them back up to place into the system. In this way they are supplementing the basic thermal mass idea with evaporative cooling. Clever eh…

These basic physical principles are transferable to model contemporary building design and can be effective when well thought out in reducing both energy consumption and peak demands on infrastructure which we here at IES get a real kick out of.

Although the thermal flywheel (room coupled thermal mass) which can be modelled very successfully in the software produced by IES is being worked into building design more and more in the UK the potential for heat exchange with the ground through large concrete heat stores which are commonly called labyrinths is rarely utilised in the UK. In Australia where I was based for the last 10 out of the last 12 months this idea is used with good effect.

 In Melbourne where we (IES) have based our Australian office there is a great example right in the heart of the city of a labyrinth air system being incorporated into building design. It is at Federation Square and is used to supply air to the atrium like street associated with the Museum and when cooling is not needed in the atrium air is diverted to serve the galleries in the museum itself.

The labyrinth was formed from rippled concrete walls which were used to construct long air paths for the air to flow down.
During the day in Melbourne the external temperature can go over 40ºC in summer but at night the external temperature gets cool. This allows the thermal mass of the labyrinth to absorb the heat of the day and the cool air of the night purges the structure of heat and leaves the thermal mass of the labyrinth cool for the following day. The Barossa termites referred to earlier have inspired a system of evaporative cooling using stored rainwater to be incorporated into the labyrinth design.

The use of advanced dynamic thermal simulation modelling, which the IES Pro suite does so well, demonstrated the temperature benefits of the techniques in place at Federation Square.
The design has proved to be very successful keeping the Atrium space at comfortable temperatures even when the temperature outside is at its most extreme, eliminating the need for mechanical cooling which has saved significant running cost. In the winter the labyrinth mass storage system also provides some heat energy to the atrium space.

See http://www.federationsquare.com.au/index.cfm?pageID=28 for more information.

Till next time,
Gary

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Tags:Australia, Engineers, Environment, reduce

Based upon my experience and the comments of a number of our more experienced customers I believe Version 6 is about to revolutionise the way performance assessment is conducted as part of the sustainable design process. 

For IES this is a seminal moment, so you’ll have to excuse us for blowing our own bagpipes!  In the future, I believe, IES staff, and many of our users, will refer back to Version 6 as the start of a major breakthrough in climate change mitigation.  So what’s so special you might you ask? 

I’ve been out in the field (some of you may have seen my Tweets) over the last two months performing a large number of demos across the globe. In the last eight weeks I have demoed Version 6 in the US, UK, UAE, Hong Kong and Australia. In total 59 demos and 4 seminars!

When comparing notes with my colleagues (who’ve also been busy demoing V6 throughout the world), the common response has been: Wow! V6 is really impressive!

We’ve received comments such as: ‘This is important for the whole Middle East region’, ‘VE-Gaia is brilliant it will change the way we can do sustainable design – when can we get it’, ‘This ticks all the boxes’, ‘We wanted about 10 new features and you showed them all and more – Multiplexing is brilliant.’

Current and potential VE users clearly see the commercial benefits of Version 6 in terms of marketing differentiation, technical advantage and productivity.  These are all important considerations, particularly in today’s economic climate.

The stage is set – all indications are that V6 will positively impact on Architects, Engineers and Clients throughout the world.  This impact will hopefully be such that words like VE-Gaia; Multiplexing and Workflow Navigators will become common terminology in the construction industry in a relatively short timescale.  Is this big headed? Perhaps so, or perhaps not… job ads here in the UK already refer to ‘VE Engineers’ and ‘IES experience required’!

If you’ve not seen Version 6 yet then have a look at our website and press releases to find out more.  Or register online for a web demo or free trial.

Cya Don

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Tags:Architects, Australia, Engineers, free, Sustainability, VE-Gaia, Version 6