Overview

This document provides some best practices for creating Design Database projects.

Method

The Design Database program offers a CAD-like interface that should make entering projects a straight forward process. You do need to take care with your model as a badly designed model can lead to the following:

• Runtime Errors
• Extended calculation times
• Irregular or unexpected results

A model should be constructed as accurately as possible though with some consideration given to design complexity. While we do offer a "CAD-like" interface it should be not be considered a full fledged CAD design tool. Simplicity can be the key to your design allowing for a robust and accurate model.

It would be prudent to familiarize yourselves with the Defaults options in CAD Input. This provides options for setting grab distances for adjacencies and snap accuracy along with other useful features that will help with your design.

Intricate surfaces and room layouts

There are instances where a room layout may contain unnecessary surfaces and recesses:

For Design Simulation or PartL, this would generate a number of extra surfaces which will slow down the calculations.  This room could be defined as follows with very little impact on the end calculations:
 
Incorrect adjacencies

Room adjacencies will usually be created automatically, along with whether a surface is exposed or internal. If a model is inaccurately traced or the grab distance is set too large, then surfaces may not be defined correctly, as here where incorrect tracing has left adjacencies to room 1 , 1b and 1c incorrect.

The correct room layout could be easily created by considering grab distance and by using care when tracing.

Rounded surfaces

Design Database doesn't intrinsically support spherical surfaces. They can be modeled reasonably accurately by incorporating a series of straight wall sections:

You should be aware however that a large number of surfaces would have an adverse effect on the time taken to run Design Simulation projects. It may also introduce more surfaces than the SBEM calculation engine (PartL) can handle. We recommend using as few surfaces as possible model the curved wall, without drastically affecting the room floor area: