In light of Autodesk recently adding Ecotect to their portfolio of products, do Bentley have anything planned, or what would be their advice be in relation to using their products, with regard to assisting me (or a team of designers) in assessing the environmental impact and/or performance of a building project (or proposal)?
- building up a dataset that includes various environmental performance indicators or criteria?
- exporting my 3D model to .......... to what? would I have to keep re-exporting it? Is there some particular strategy or things I should do/don't do if I want to link my 3D model to some environmental analysis package/set up
- do they feel that a combination of the current main products (architecture, structural, M & E systems) is "delivered" (to the customers) in a manner that makes this reasonably approachable?
Regards
Danny Cooley
Freelance CAD technician
I revise my previous mentions of FEA in dynamic thermal modelers. Here is an excellent summary: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1427&page=4#Item_3 - see BristolPaul's post, incl
"TAS has an hourly simulation timestep. Heat transfer through the fabric of the building is dealt with by a response factor approach (ASHRAE methodology) and the overall heat balance is gained by basically solving a set of simultaneous energy equations for the surface and air temperatures, etc at the same time."
This, and other dynamic modelers' methodologies, is not FEA but is still 'superior' to the approach of the 'second rank' of modelers such as (AFAIK) Autodesk's EcoTech and the free Canadian Hot2000 (not to be confused with Hot3000).
Thermal modelling goes mainstream: http://www.aecmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=257
A somewhat cut down FREE version of EIS is now available not only for Revit, but now Sketchup Free!
Every 'design your dream house' amateur will now be getting hands-on experience of fundamental and detailed energy efficiency factors, and as such may well find themselves better informed than any professionals they may turn to.
Brilliant
This must mean that model simplification happens automatically - no way would a Sketchup Free app require the model to be rebuilt just for thermal modelling?
All true, so Autodesk/EIS/Ecotech boasting about so-called direct import from CAD (actually via shaky gbxml) is a red herring - so far.
But if in future CAD models can be imported and automatically simplified as necessary for Tas etc, why not?
Would be specially useful when trying different building shapes - instead of changing the model manually many times iteratively and re-running Tas, to find optimum shape for thermal performance, great to do the changes in a parametric CAD modeller and re-import.
Even better to let GC do the iterations for you, to converge on thermal optimum.
I'm just back from a weeks training course in TAS, and would like to share my points of view.
To come with the conclusion first - it doesn't make any sense to put every information in one model. There are far too many different interests between the different professions. While an integrated approach between the architect and the structural engineer sometimes makes sense, it's a different kind of thing between the environmental stuff and other professions.
When designing 3D models in TAS, you don't snap to anything at all. +- 50mm, even 100mm doesn't change anything at all. You really just sketchup the model, like you would do by hand. The thing which is much more interesting in TAS is how your wall is built up, which layers it has, and how they perform (humidity, insulation, thermal mass). More or less things which I'm not interested in as a structural engineer at all. Others things are e.g if you can open your windows, if you have blinds (permanently or when the sun is shining), how your ventilation systems performs, etc. It's really 2 completely different subjects. So it doesn't make any sense to make one model. Usually you don't have the time to do that eather...
Stunning simulations of what Ecotect can do, standalone or allied to Autodesk products: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/creative_energy_homes/stoneguardC60/analysis_animate.html - and Ecotect isn't even a true dynamic FEA modeller like Bentley (EDSL) Tas http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Bentley+Tas/ or Bentley Hevacomp simulator http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Hevacomp+Dynamic+Simulation/
I'm looking forward to this and more, seamlessly in Bentley products, and hope it happens soon enough to catch this wave, which has already been going strong for a year
Edit: see my post 17 Dec 08 - it's not FEA