IES Blog

I am delighted to be able to talk publically today about how we’ve formally strengthened our partnership with Google SketchUp to further low-energy sustainable building design.  This is such important news that I have abandoned my own blog to write this blog for IES.  This is great news for us as a company, our customers, and for the global sustainable building design community as a whole!

I believe this partnership will make a considerable difference on the impact of reducing carbon emission, and energy and water consumption throughout the world.  Why?  Well here are my top three reasons:

• SketchUp dominates the concept/early stages of the building design market worldwide.  The decisions taken at the early stages of a new design (or a refurbishment) have a profound impact on the energy, water and carbon usage throughout that building’s lifecycle.
• IES’ new plug-in for SketchUp offers significant new features that give SketchUp users much easier access to all the different levels of IES analysis software from VE-Ware, through VE-Toolkits and VE-Gaia all the way through to VE-Pro.  Hence SketchUp user can use our technology to quantify, optimise and verify the performance of proposed sustainable design options, across all stages of the design process and in different levels of detail.
• SketchUp are committing to promote sustainable design by offering IES VE customers an exclusive discount off SketchUp Pro if they download the IES SketchUp plug-in.

In essence IES have made it easier to use SketchUp for sustainable design and Google SketchUp has made a commitment to support IESVE analysis for low-energy design from their packages.  This is a massive gesture by a major corporation such as Google and they should be commended for helping promote the sustainable design agenda so openly on a worldwide basis.

Architects’ that we have introduced the IES and SketchUp integration to are already excited.  You can read in more detail about how Broadway Malyan has been piloting the use of this here.  Ian Walker, head of Environmental Engineering even went so far as to say; “Potentially, I think that this development could be as significant for the building design industry as the introduction of AutoCAD in the late 80’s – it might just be the catalyst to joining up environmental thinking between the architect and engineer.  The only successful way to approach sustainable design is through integration across the entire design process.”

Obviously, we are not just focusing on SketchUp as we are also continuing to improve our connections to Autodesk Revit and Graphisoft ArchiCAD as well as our gbXML links with other products, however with SketchUp we have managed to get deeper ‘under the hood’ which has made it much easier to do certain developments.

Furthermore, the IES/SketchUp partnership will greatly assist the many users of Revit, ArchiCAD, MicroStation and others BIM/CAD systems who use SketchUp at the key early stages of the design process before moving to the production phase.  Consequently they can ensure their design is as sustainable as possible prior to moving into another package, where more than likely they can still use the IESVE. 

To round up, I believe our partnership announcement is good for IES and SketchUp, good for our customers and will make a significant difference to sustainable design throughout the world.  Don’t forget that SketchUp and our VE-Ware and VE-SBEM modules are all available for free.  Just think of the energy and carbon emission savings being made worldwide with these alone!

I would also like to say a few things about working with the SketchUp guys over the last two years.  First it has been a pleasure working with them and anyone that knows the SketchUp team in Boulder, Colorado will agree that they are extremely professional and passionate about what they do; secondly they have been extremely helpful and supportive; and finally they have been one of the ‘easiest’ corporations we have ever dealt with – Wow!

You can read more about the partnership in the official press release.

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Tags:IES, plug-ins, sketchup, SketchUp Partnership

One of the key benefits of IES VE tools is our collaboration with Autodesk, Google and Graphisoft which allows designers and architects to use their BIM/CAD model to start performing analysis at the very early design stage. It can simplify the process of recreating the model from scratch, as you would have had to do in the traditional way.

Through this, many architects are starting to realize that building performance analysis is not only for engineers, and that by working holistically from conceptual stage, the project can achieve much better efficiencies than when analysis is left till later phases of the project.

In traditional building performance modeling, the modeler uses information from drawings, photos, etc. to construct a model within simulation software from scratch. Misinterpreting the information from CAD to building performance model is common, and in some cases important geometry might be missing from the information provided or left out of the model by accident.

As BIM becomes increasingly popular in the architecture industry and more connections to analysis tools appear and strengthen, architects can start performing analysis on different design options, including climate understanding, building orientation, massing during conceptual stages, and as the design develops, analysis such as daylight assessment, water review, heating/cooling loads, renewable use, etc. IES has a direct plug-in for both Autodesk Revit and Google SketchUp, as well as direct connectivity to Graphisoft ArchiCAD.

One important thing to note is that there are some fundamental differences between an energy model and an architectural model used to generate construction documents. Schema’s such as gbXML (www.gbxml.org) are used to streamline the data flow between BIM platforms and analysis tools, so users should have an understanding of how this works and what will translate, and what will not. 

A model that is very heavy in details will affect the computation time of the simulation. One of the things I like to do whenever I start running simulation is to spend 15-30 minutes cleaning up any elements that are not necessary for energy analysis (of course doing a “Save As” on your existing model first). I know a lot of architects are probably saying if we have a direct plug-in, why do I want to waste all this time cleaning up the model? Isn’t that the reason why we want to use the plug-in?

Spending a little extra time cleaning up a model before running a simulation, will reduce the file size and run time; if you are doing a few simulations it’s definitely worth the time. The IES VE will still run the simulation if you don’t clean up the model, but it will go through every element within it trying to figure out what needs to be included and what doesn’t, which can take a lot of time. Plus, the more detail you have in the model, the more risk of inaccuracy during translation. If you want to understand more about model translation, visit our website for whitepapers on both SketchUp and Revit to IES: http://www.iesve.com/Learning/IES-Whitepapers

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Tags:Architects, BIM, daylighting, Engineers, gbXML, plug-in, plug-ins, reduce, Renewables, Revit, sketchup

The Boston Architectural College/Worcester Polytechnic Institute Advanced Studio Course Comes to an End

In a previous blog, I had written about a class that I was assistant teaching during the Spring 2009 semester, along with Andreas Savvides AIA, AICP of Boston Architectural College and Alan Quinn of Sasaki Associates, Inc., Masters and Bachelors of Architecture students have been teamed with, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, cost estimating students to evolve their creative designs into affordable, energy efficient structures.

Through the use of the VE-Ware, Revit plug-in, and the VE-Toolkits, students were able to explore their designs in a way they had not experienced before. Perhaps the most surprising thing to the students was how badly their buildings performed initially before making changes to the building envelope, heating and cooling system, orientation, etc., especially when compared again CBECS (Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey) data. Once students had successfully translated their Revit models to IES, the initial results were noted and became the starting point for a competition. The student who could make the greatest impact on their building energy consumption, looking at the variable of “design building energy use intensity”, would receive a year student license of IES’ full suite of software, as well as a write-up on the IES Blog.

Craig W. Herrmann, a student at Boston Architectural College in the Bachelor of Architecture program and a Project Coordinator at Jacobs Engineering, employed multiple strategies to reduce his building’s energy consumption. By incorporating roof overhangs, external shading devices, a very energy efficient building envelope, and the most appropriate heating and cooling system, Craig was not only able to win the contest, but was also able to cut the energy consumption almost in half. As you can see from Craig’s presentation, the resulting structure was both aesthetically appealing and thoughtful to its environmental impact.

You can view the full presentation here

In the next few years, courses that include energy modelling are becoming more and more prevalent at architectural colleges around the country. The Boston Architectural College pushes to stay at the forefront of this technological movement, and I will be back to teach more courses like this in the future.

However, I need to finish my own Master’s thesis first. Wish me luck!

Michelle

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Tags:AIA, Boston, Engineers, plug-in, plug-ins, reduce, Revit, VE-Toolkits, VE-Ware

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

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Tags:3D Warehouse, downloads, plug-ins, sketchup