Design Computation Symposium

AU had a great start with the symposium that addressed several direction in development of computational design. Informative sessions by the leaders in the advanced use of computation tools shed some light on the future of digital media its role within anthropocentric reality.

Notable lecture were given by prof. Dr. Kristina Shea on integration of knowledge management and generative design and fabrication, Jos Stam on Unified Dynamic Solver used in CG apps to simulate physical effects in a dynamic systems and Prof. Joe Clark of University of Strathclyde on Building Performance Simulation and the need for a unified model approach required for the whole building energy analysis.

AU Building Performance Analysis

This year's AU attention to sustainable design with the aid of Autodesk's BIM enabled applications is just another confirmation that ADSK means green business. I am particularly interested to see how far down the road we can push the information gathered through sustainability analysis during the design process into the construction activities. Some courses look very promising in that regard.
Along the same lines they just ‘up the ante’ by conducting the survey of their existing facilities from the energy footprint point of view. These results are published and posted on Autodesk’s website (Link).

Post Occupany Energy Use Analysis

Case study in usability of Ecotect Analysis for the adaptive reuse projects. More information on this project is available upon a request.

Cool Revit add-on for a hot summer

After living through the negative effect of the thermal lag in a non-insulated masonry building during my vacation on one of the Adriatic islands, I wished that the architect designing this, in all other aspects beautiful family residence, had the access to this latest add-on for Revit platform.

Great job Autodesk for this technology transfer between Revit and Ecotect Analysis!

Revit - Ecotect Surface subdivision improvements

Thanks to Jon, and his post on the improved curtain wall workflow in Revit Architecture 2010, we can see how one can significantly improve geometry translation process when analyzing building's skin within Ecotect Analysis.
Keep burning that Midnight Oil Jon!

Sun Power Calculator

This is a link to a SunPower solar calculator that will tell you:
• How much a SunPower solar system will cost for your house
• What tax credits, rebates and other incentives are available to you
• Potential financing costs and energy savings

Virtual Design and Construction Survey

This is a link to a survey on the role of Virtual Design and Construction / BIM in construction industry with an emphasis on the use of this methodology by both General Contractors and Design-Build firms.

Revit Architecture 2010 gbXML improvements…

Beyond those well anticipated changes in the Revit platform such as the Ribbon Interface and the somewhat more capable Free Form modeling engine, there are a number of more minute improvements that make Revit continue to shine as the dominant BIM compliant platform in US market . In recent years Autodesk as a company has worked hard to establish itself as a champion of BIM aided sustainable design, and the acquisition of Green Building Studio and Ecotect made us all wonder how those two applications would fit within the greater agenda of building information modeling.
In the newest release of Revit Architecture 2010, certain long-overdue gbXML related enhancements have proved that good things come to those who wait. The revamped interface goes beyond a cosmetic change and introduces functionality that will definitely help building performance modeling enthusiasts.
By the same token, the new releases of Green Building Studio and Ecotect 2010 offer additional functionality via gbXML exchange that streamlines the geometry manipulation and translation process among several BIM compliant platforms.
Let’s start by reviewing the new interface, with settings that are now better exposed to the designer that would like to have a more comprehensive understanding of a proposed design’s implications on overall performance.
At the project level choices are given to determine a facility’s operational mode by selecting its category from the Building Type list which adheres to gbXML schema 0.37 and Building Type spaces as outlined in ASHRAE 90.1 2007. Another important aspect of the new interface is the ability to determine the level of detail, if you will, at which the geometry will be translated into the gbXML file.

It is important to mention that from a designer’s perspective an attempt to analyze a model at the end of the SD phase, or even later, might yield frustrating moments as one is attempts to fix inevitable “leaks” that are caused by both compounded user errors and Revit’s inability to interpret complex (rich in detail) design intent via gbXML. During this translation process Revit can ignore all of the leftover spaces that did not get a room assignment, such as wall cavities, and override them by setting the appropriate value for Sliver Space Tolerance. What is unique in the new interface is the preview of the exported model with its corresponding rooms/spaces and surfaces, in a similar fashion as with the IES export utility. The two available tabs within the gbXML export dialog box, “General” and “Details” allow for two levels of model information access as well as for some post processing of information that is submitted for the future analysis. The “Details” tab is particularly valuable as it allows for a more comprehensive look into the analytical model by allowing a user to either highlight or isolate the individual rooms as shown in pic.4 or to highlight and isolate the individual analytical surfaces for the purpose of verifying potential model drawbacks.

Switching to the Analytical Surfaces preview allows for an even greater level of detail in previewing translated geometry and in a slightly different fashion from the VRML preview where all of the surfaces are color coded, the orientation of the surface is contained in the translated name of the surface and the function of the surface is color coded. Nevertheless, beyond that almost aesthetic discrepancy, the functionality of this surface preview surpasses any of the currently available ways to validate translated geometry.
Now this is all great, but by the same token this exposes some not so great things about Revit’s modeling engine and about the ever growing lack of self imposed modeling discipline when creating content in BIM applications. As most of today’s software compensates for “sloppy” modeling, this compensation factor cannot cover up for inefficiencies within the analytical model. This leads us to another good reason for the “Less is more” approach to energy modeling. In pic.8 it can be seen how the surface tessellation that is conducted by Revit has a relatively hard time interpreting the optimal face layout for the given representation and instead of having only 4 properly oriented faces, the software interprets this wall as a combination of more than 4 faces, which translates into more analytical surfaces that are being pushed for the analysis. More surfaces do not necessarily mean a better model, but on the contrary it can produce results that are less accurate and harder to interpret.

This newly added export functionality is a significant step toward the desired interoperability between Autodesk’s BIM supporting platforms and a range of energy modeling tools that are either attributed to the same software vendor or are available as free of charge, third party Building Performance Analysis applications. One of the most obvious applications of gbXML exchange within the Autodesk family of products is model information exchange between Revit and Ecotect bundled with Green Building Studio. This somewhat convoluted way of cross application geometry and limited object information exchange will be the focus of several upcoming BIMology posts.

Green Building Studio Release 3.5

Autodesk has announced a maintenance relase of its web-based service for Building Performance Analysis that brings the following improvements;

Enable Simulation of Canadian Projects
Compatibility with Autodesk's Revit 2010 platform
Enhanced Stability
Enhanced Usability

The detailed list of improvements is available form Green Building Studio web-site.