Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Independent Study 2: Revit to Ecotect

Hannah and I started with an interest in how Revit can help to make a building sustainable.  We started to research sustainability and Revit eventually coming across two programs called IES and Ecotect that worked with a Revit model and had the ability to run analysis’ to determine various aspects of sustainability.  After researching both programs we decided Ecotect was the better choice.  Ecotect allows designers to run a quick analysis on their design in the earliest stages of conceptual design.  Instead of just displaying results in numbers and graphics Ecotect provides a visual and interactive display, a very nice feature especially for showing clients. 

We used the house project we built in the beginning of the year and learned how to export a Revit file as a gbXML file and then import it into Ecotect.  We ran into one problem in the importing phase, we got the error message that our house did not contain any rooms.  This is a crucial and easy step you must follow when preparing a Revit model for Ecotect, and we showed the steps in our blog.  After we got our house into Ecotect we decided to run a daylight analysis on our house.  This analysis shows in a colored grid areas of the house that get the most sunlight and areas of the house that may not get any sunlight at all.  Although our initial idea was to actually create a sustainable house, we ended up with a good understanding of the process in taking a Revit model and preparing it to be brought into Ecotect.  I think Ecotect has some very useful features that could quickly show off an aspect of architecture that was carefully thought out and usually only is explained with words. 

Kate

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Independent BIM Study: Revit to Ecotec

Over the past few weeks, Kate and I explored the idea of using Revit as a tool to design sustainably. After much research we decided that our objective was to understand the connection of Revit to Ecotect and how to run an analysis at any point in the design process.

We read several case studies about BIM and sustainable design. The first one posted in the blog touches on the possibilities that Revit has on its own. The second features a program called IES VE. And the third talks about how Ecotect can aid in sustainable design. After comparing these articles we decided to focus on the connection between Ecotect and Revit. We found that Ecotect provides many benefits by allowing designers to simulate the performance of their building projects right from the earliest stages of conceptual design and by giving a visual and interactive display of the analysis results to better understand. Revit-based design models can be exported to gbXML format and imported directly into Autodesk Ecotect for analysis throughout the design process. Also, Early-stage, Revit-based massing models can be used with the site analysis functionality to determine the optimal location, shape, and orientation of a building design based on fundamental environmental factors such as the overshadowing of a particular building

Autodesk provides many video tutorials on this connection between Revit and Ecotect. The first one taught us how to load a Revit file into Ecotect by exporting it as a gbXML file. We decided to follow the instructions using our first Revit project, the house. We had difficulties with exporting. The following post explains how we solved these problems. On December 8th’s post we successfully imported a gbXML file into Ecotect from Revit.  Finally, we learned how to run a daylight analysis and tried this with the imported house project. We were successful in understanding the connection between Ecotect and Revit and learning how to run an analysis.

Hannah

Thursday, December 10, 2009

daylight analysis on Revit house

We followed a tutorial that went over grids, and applying a grid to the floor which would be used to calculate the amount of sunlight that would reach it based on the location and other specifications.


Step 1: import gbMXL file

Step 2: Double check the location is correct, on the right hand side click the project tab.  On the left there will be a site location box, click find. Search for a major city near your location or enter in the latitude and longitude.




















Step 3: In the 3D editor tab on the left hand side click the analysis grid icon (an icon that looks like a blue grid).  Click display analysis grid, a blue box will appear on the floor of your model, this grid needs to fit to your floor plan.  To do this select your floor and click auto fit grid to objects.  A box will appear with different options, check the option within, and make sure you are on the XY axis, click OK.  The grid should fit within, and outline your floor.






Step 4: Now you are ready to run the analysis, in the top menu click calculate-lighting analysis.  Select natural light levels-next-over the analysis grid-next-chose your precision (the higher the slower, it took 30 minutes on the setting high)-next-use the default settings for the lux, and overcast sky-next-average-next-regulatory-next-OK

Now it will show with your model with the value range of daylight in a colored graphic on the grid of your model.


Tuesday, December 8, 2009

preparing a Revit model for Ecotect

Autodesk Sustainable Design Curriculum
Video Tutorial Two: Revit Prep

(followed partially with project 1: house model)

Step 1: Open completed house model in Revit

Step 2: Under the manage tab in project settings select project information. Select edit-energy data.

Energy data will be exported to the gbXML file.  The building type will effect scheduling of the energy, postal code sets a default location, ground plane assumes everything below that level is underground, The sliver space tolerance will allow gaps between the spaces if the gaps are over 1ft (the default setting) it will be considered an exterior face of the room. Because we are focusing on a house I chose a single family and oxford's postal code and used the default settings for the rest.
(this step can also be done at the very end when the file is being exported)


























Step 3:  Still under the manage tab in project location select location.
Select the tab place and enter the city closest to your location, if one does not exist you can enter a latitude and longitude.















Step 4: Under the home tab in the room and area location select the drop setting area and volume computations.

Verify that areas and volumes are being calcuated for the gbXML file, also that the room area computation is at wall center

Step 5 is very important, and fixes the problem that was encountered in the previous post of this blog.  In this step you must make sure that you have defined rooms correctly in your project.

Step 5: Entering the plan views (in the home tab) select the room under room & area.  At this point the message rooms are currently not visible in the view. do you want to make them visible? may appear if you have not defined any rooms yet. select yes.  This puts you into an editing mode where you can move the mouse towards the middle of each room and click which will highlight the room in blue.  Make sure that the upper limit is correct, the default is level one, because this project has two levels I needed to select level two.  Do this for every room in your project.




I got a message about the area with staircase overlapping and wanted to make sure that the room was defined correctly, to do this i chose a section view of the stair case.  Under view-view properties-edit visibility/graphics overrides i selected room and expanded it by pressing the + button and selected color fill, interior fill, and reference.  Now I can see the defined space of the room highlighted in blue.
This can also be done on the floor plan views to double check that every room is defined

Step 6: If you have not named your rooms this is a helpful (but not necessary) step because each room will be visible/editable in Ecotect.
The easiest way to do this is to create a room schedule.  In the view tab select-schedule-schedule/quantities-rooms (pick area, level, name etc.).
Now you can edit the name of each room (selecting the room will highlight it in the plan views)










Step 6: Export as gbXML file (can fix/do step 2 during this)

















in the details tab you can see all the rooms you've created/named, this will show you possible errors that might exist in your model

in my case there was an error message (Room Volumes Overlap, adjust Upper Limit and Upper Offset.) in the spaces that included my stairs. I am not sure if this will prevent it from importing to Ecotect, or end up giving a false analysis of the building.  I will discuss the outcome in the next post.


Sunday, December 6, 2009

the link between Revit and Ecotect

Autodesk Sustainable Design Curriculum
Video Tutorial One: Analysis and Geometry Models 

(followed partially with project 1: house model, and also Autodesk data set)

Step1: Open model in Revit













Step 2: Revit File-Export-gbXML
gbXML files export as analysis models. It does not matter what view you export in, it will export the entire model.















Step 3: You have 5 options of complexity to choose from for exporting: Simple, Simple with shading surfaces, complex, complex with shading surfaces, and complex with mullions and shading surfaces. For this I chose complex with shading surfaces.













Step 4: For a geometry model export it as a DXF model. This will only export the one view that you see. This is the other exporting option for Revit to Ecotect, but we will be exporting a gbXML file.

Problems faced: When I tried to export this model as a gbXML model a few errors limited me from exporting. It said, “Revit was unable to identify any rooms. If you are sure that rooms have been created in the project, please check the Project Phase setting to verify that the Project Phase matches the phase in which rooms have been defined in your project.” I tried many things to fix this and could not. For the rest of the work in Ecotect I used their example model to follow the tutorial with. Here is what the program looks like:


Wednesday, December 2, 2009

timeline of goals/refined objective

Objective:
understand the connection of Revit to Ecotect and how to run an analysis at any point in the design process 


December 4: Download Ecotect and the structures used in the Autodesk Sustainable Curriculum videos.

December 7: Follow the GBXML video and the Intro to Ecotect video to gain a better understanding of the Revit to Ecotect connection.
 
December 9: Follow the RevitPrep video to prepare for the Ecotect analysis.

December 11: Export model into ecotect and run a building analysis.


Benefits of Ecotect:
•    Ecotect allows designers to simulate the performance of their building projects right from the earliest stages of conceptual design.
•    Revit-based design models can be exported to gbXML format and imported directly into Autodesk Ecotect for analysis throughout the design process.
•    Early-stage, Revit-based massing models can be used with the site analysis functionality to determine the optimal location, shape, and orientation of a building design based on fundamental environmental factors such as the overshadowing of a particular building
•    It gives a visual and interactive display of the analysis results to better understand