Hello Friends!
Some days ago I had the honour of co-organising an online session with the Hong Kong Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and RIBA. The Topic was: Energy Evaluation with BIM. The webinar was 1 hour of hands-on workshop about learning the basics of the Energy Evaluation set of tools in Archicad.
Archicad is the best BIM authoring tool for Architects, and Architects have a crucial role on developing sustainable projects and development strategies. That is why Archicad incorporates a FREE set of energetic evaluation tools that assists architects in evaluating the energetic performance of our projects.
If you are interested to learn the basics of the Energy Evaluation Tools in Archicad, please see the video below. On the webinar we explore, using two very simple examples, how to learn the basics of these tools:
The principles of the Energy Evaluation set of tools of Archicad are very simple. We operate with two elements: Building Geometry Data and Environmental & Climate conditions.
What it means is that we input all Climate data in our Archicad Project, so the engine knows which data to use in terms of Temperature, Humidity, wind, location, sun light values, etc…
The Building Geometry data has in consideration all inherent physical values in the Construction elements of the project. Building materials in Archicad as you know have all these Physical properties within them for calculations such as: Density, Thermal Conductivity (W/mK), Heat Capacity (J/KgK), embodied carbon (KgCO2/Kg), and more….
The Building envelope becomes analysed in between the external weather conditions and the Thermal Blocks (spaces enclosed inside the building envelope), which have their own Hygrothermal Comfort values inserted by the Architect.
After analysing all these data together, Archicad exports a detailed Report of Energetic consumption values. As a result the designer can analyse the data exported on the report and modify the design to increase the Insulation capacity, energy efficiency, orientation, passive strategies to minimise the energetic gain, etc…
Energy Evaluation Set of Tools have a Big Brother Called EcoDesigner STAR, which is an Add On for Archicad with a more detailed analysis capacity and further capabilities such as: Analysis of Thermal Bridge in Construction Details, Separate report for different spaces, compare Results with Design variations, and more…
Have a look to the Set of Videos available online to learn the Possibilities of Energy Evaluation & EcoDesigner STAR:
It is proven that the decisions we take at the Design stage do have the biggest impact on the Energetic efficiency of our building. Therefore Architects, Developers and Designers have a great responsibility on taking the right decisions when starting a project.
Passive measures that allow our projects to “save energy” or “waste less” could not even have any impact at all on the budget of a project. For example: Smart Studied Orientation, in particular for glazed surfaces in order to optimise solar gain depending on local climate; use of natural ventilation strategies; continuous insulation envelope and others (…).
From Enzyme APD and GRAPHISOFT we challenge and encourage Designers to make their design more sustainable from the beginning, to evaluate projects also based on the quality of the energetic measures that we put in place to make our projects more sustainable.
BIM technology it is also a great asset for evaluating how sustainable is our design. The data in our model allow us to understand better the energetic behaviour of our design.
We encourage you to Give a try to Energy Evaluation and EcoDesigenr STAR!!
