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A NEW training course from IES….

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?

> What about innovative LZCT technologies?

As a widely recognised expert in the global building performance analysis field IES has decided to take a lead on this and create a course addressing these questions. “Understanding the Fundamentals of Sustainable Design, Striving Towards Carbon Neutral”.

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.

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Tags:Architects, BREEAM, daylighting, Engineers, Environment, hints and tips, LEED, reduce, Sustainability

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.

Pete M

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Tags:Architecture 2030 Challenge, hints and tips, LEED, sketchup

I’ve got a workflow conundrum for you today:

I’m using SketchUp or Revit and I’ve delved into the Full <Virtual Environment> made some changes to the Templates in the Full <Virtual Environment>. I’m happy with the analysis. I now want to go back to the original model in SketchUp or Revit and want to change (for example) some geometrical detail. When I go to set room or building properties I don’t get the detailed choices I get in the <Virtual Environment> so when I get to the <Virtual Environment> I’ll need to start all over and re-apply all the room data, Right??

Luckily No!

There is a feature in the full <Virtual Environment> that’s been around for a few years now called Model Merge. Specifically it’s a feature within ModelIT and allows the merging of IES Template and Room data from a previously saved model.

It’s important to follow the correct steps to avoid heartache so I have produced a flow chart and a worked example of how to approach this. I’ve used SketchUp but the approach is the same in Revit. Attached are the models too. This is a great tool that avoids repetitive input of data!

Workflow Summary:

• Create Model in SketchUp  

• Make template changes in <Virtual Environment> 

• SAVE AS!!!

• Edit model in SketchUp: 

• Open in <Virtual Environment> 

  
• Merge Model Data (Apply Original model template data onto New model)
• Continue Analyzing from where you left off.

For more details you can download a powerpoint here

Thanks

Craig

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Tags:hints and tips, model merge, Revit, sketchup

Welcome to very exciting times here at IES. Our new link to Google SketchUp, we think, is a real game changer and means there’re no longer any barriers for considering energy performance and the Architecture 2030 Challenge right from the very earliest stages of design.

However, you can read all about the benefits of the plug-in on our new dedicated web section.  What I really wanted to point you all in the direction of is the example models that we’ve placed on Google 3D Warehouse. You can use these models to test and learn how to use the SketchUp plug-in.  Find them on the Google 3D Warehouse site by searching for IESVE.

We’ve developed these to show good practice for creating SketchUp models for the purpose of analysis, and show examples of different building types and sizes.  They demonstrate why enclosed volumes, which are required to generate rooms that will be used in the analysis, are so important, and much more…

I would suggest you take the models as a starting point and have a go at varying shape, form, massing, room layout or properties and maybe also try seeing the effect of surrounding buildings or shading devices.  Our associated How To… and User Guide should help you along the way.  Check out, how we have:

• used opacity to describe walls and fenestration
• set building properties
• located the building
• set the orientation using (Get View) from Google Earth

Happy Green Building…

Craig

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Tags:3D Warehouse, Architecture 2030 Challenge, hints and tips, sketchup