Using the Revit Energy Analytical Model for Total Carbon Analysis from Concept to Detailed Design

SIMON WHELAN: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining the class today, our Autodesk University '23 class. My name is Simon Whelan. I'm with FenestraPro. I'm joined by my colleague Eric Grey from Autodesk. Between the two of us, we're going to take you through our class today, Using the Revit Energy Analytical Model for Total Carbon Analysis from Concept to Detailed Design.

I'm going to go into a little more detail and obviously introduce ourselves, now, in a second. But just before I do, here's the safe harbor statement. You might just take a couple of seconds just to read through that and make sure we're happy, and then we'll push on.

OK. So just to give a quick intro to myself, to FenestraPro, to Eric, et cetera, and then also just to what we're doing today, as I said, Simon Whelan is my name. I'm one of the founders of FenestraPro. We're based in Dublin, Ireland. FenestraPro develop facade design applications, particularly through building information modeling in Revit. FenestraPro looks at the performance of your envelope and your facade, predominantly for designers, architects, engineers, et cetera, and to give them an understanding of how the building energy performance is affected by the facade, so areas of glazing, orientation, performance of your glazing, any shading et cetera.

We are Autodesk Industry Partners and we're Autodesk Development Network Partners, and FenestraPro uses the Revit model and particularly the Energy Analytical Model to leverage the data that it uses to give you data back on the performance of the facade. So, needless to say, we've become quite familiar with the Energy Analytical Model over the last few years, you know, how good it is for some things, the limitations around others, some of the problems we've had, et cetera. So the class today is just very much in that area around Energy Analytical Modeling.

The EAM, as we also call it, is used for, as I said for, FenestraPro, but also for other Autodesk products and functions and features, such as Systems Analysis, Insight, and becoming a next-gen Insight. So the EAM is, I suppose, very much an enabler to allow designers and to now allow modelers to analyze their buildings with energy and carbon in mind.

I'm also joined by Eric. Eric is very familiar with, I suppose, the EAM, coming from the Revit side. Eric, do you want to say a couple of words?

ERIC GREY: Yeah. Thanks, Simon. My name is Eric Grey. I'm a Senior QA Analyst with Autodesk. I work on one of the Revit dev teams. Our team is responsible for the Energy Analytical Model. And as well as System Analysis and some of the MEP features, I've worked in QA Autodesk for 18 years, and I come from a CAD background. I previously worked in the MEP department of an A&E firm. So back to you, Simon.

SIMON WHELAN: Yeah. Thanks, Eric. So between myself and Eric, I suppose, we do have a good grounding, both the technology behind the EAM, very much on Eric's side of the house, but also the EAM in practice, the Energy Analytical Model in practice and in workflows. So our class, today, is very much about that Energy Analytical Model and how we can look at different workflows at different stages to use it.

So the things we'll be covering will be, obviously, to understand it. We'll be talking about how it works, what it does, the pros and cons, et cetera, and some of the problems it solves. We're going to talk about some workflows at different stages or different levels of details of model and different analyses types, I suppose, whether that's very early conceptual design through late-stage detail or construction documentation.

I'm going to talk a little bit about FenestraPro's experience with designers and with architectural firms and facade engineers, et cetera, and some of those key barriers that we've seen in terms of the Energy Analytical Model and what we have done and how we've responded and adding some value to what Revit can offer. And we're going to talk about the future of these tools. Particularly, I think Eric is going to talk a little bit about next-gen Insight. And, yeah, we'd love to hear your feedback and how any input that you might have, both for FenestraPro or for Revit that we can kind of take back to the development teams here.

So we are obviously doing-- our class today is Using the Revit Energy Analytical Model for Total Carbon Analysis. There's a number of classes that maybe tie in quite nicely with this class. I've listed them here, but particularly I just wanted to kind of mention this one, Total Carbon Data Analysis and Insights. We will be referencing that class a little bit, once or twice, later through this class and how these all kind of tie together and how the Energy Analytical Model can be used in things like this. But, also, we're going to just mention another class with regards to systems analysis because, again, the Energy Analytical Model is used for systems analysis and driving through energy plus to calculate our energy use.

So, as you can imagine, all these things hang together quite well, and the Energy Analytical Model is the foundation of that data, I suppose. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today.

So where it fits on that, I suppose, workflow with regards to both embodied carbon and operational carbon, the EAM lives in Revit. Right? It's native to Revit. Eric's going to talk a little bit more about this. So we are very much in that Revit workflow, and we're going to talk quite a lot about that today.

Just to say a couple of resources coming from this class, we have an Energy Analytical Model Guide that can give you an understanding of a lot of the stuff that we'll be doing in this class today, EAM modes relating to objectives and outcomes, some guidance on energy settings, of which there's quite a lot, and we'll document the workflows that we're outlining in this class. And we'll also provide an a Revit Energy Analytical Model Template, and in that template will be predefined families and things that have the appropriate material properties and you can use in the way that we'll be using them in the class today. A number of views and view settings will be provided along with another few bits and pieces in the that Revit environment. And, as I said, we'll be we'll be using that in the class today.

So, right, let's kick off really properly, now. Let's talk about building energy analysis, first. And this idea of, is there ever a right answer, well, what is building energy analysis? And, very often, people get fixated on, well, it's wrong, and we're doing it wrong, and there's a right way of doing things and a wrong way of doing things.

And I suppose the one thing that we'd like to point out is there's very many different types, approaches, methodologies, and different analyses of a building. I mean, obviously, we know that carbon, energy, comfort can be the more complex stuff and, very often, the endgame of your complex energy analysis. But, also, there's these lots of more specific areas-- solar, daylighting, materials, occupancy, or whatever-- that we could be doing quick and smaller analysis types that are obviously feeding into these wider, more complex, endpoints of carbon, for example.

But, even beyond that, there's lots and lots more that I haven't even mentioned, right, and there's lots and lots of different ways of doing things. So how can there be a right answer when there's a million different things that we can do and areas that we can focus on? And also, bearing in mind that there's different stages of a project-- right, there's very early conceptual, there's schematic, design development, and then there's late-stage construction documentation and then a related level of detail in the Revit environment for those stages. So the level of detail and the time and resources that we have to put into those analyses can really make, can really define what we're trying to do. So, very often, it's about, well, what's the question, right?

There are a number of types of analysis, and obviously this is just me. This is mine. I'm putting these into buckets for the purposes of explaining, putting this into context. There is very much feasibility that we might be looking at. Can we put the building on a site, or what does that look like in terms of the climate? Optimization, where we might be trying to tweak the orientation on the site or optimize our facade and our envelope. There might be documentation, compliance checking, documentation for different methodologies or LEED, or whatever that might be. And then, certainly, there might be validation at very late stage in construction or in operation.

But there's no reason why these different analyses types couldn't move around at different stages. Like, there's no reason why the feasibility exercises couldn't happen at quite a late stage or we can't document from conceptual design. You know? So the EAM, I suppose, enables that. Obviously, the level of detail won't be as great, but it will account for that, and it's appropriate data for the stage that you're at.

So, Eric, I'm going to hand over to you to talk through the Revit Energy Analytical Model and some of the details around that.

ERIC GREY: All right. Great. Thanks, Simon.

So the Energy Analytical Model in Revit, OK, what is it and why do we use it? So the energy model is just a simple, lightweight representation of the building. It tracks energy data that's used for energy analysis. This energy data are the heat gains and losses throughout the building. The energy model is comprised of two components, the analytical spaces and the analytical surfaces. So all this energy data and the geometric data that exists in the energy model can then be exported to other applications, such as Insight or Systems Analysis for Revit or third-party tools such as FenestraPro for different analysis.

So how does the energy model work? When you generate an energy model, you'll see these cyan-colored boxes, and these are the analytical spaces. The analytical spaces are just an area and a volume of air that's either heated or cooled based on gains or losses. Each analytical space contains a set of analytical surfaces that determine the shape of the analytical space.

The analytical surfaces are geometric elements that represent the building elements. They each have a different color that's based on the building element that they represent, for instance, floors, walls, or ceilings. And, also, the analytical surfaces contain the thermal properties that determine the heat transfer between spaces and between a space and the outside. They also contain constructions that are used for carbon analysis.

So once you want to generate an energy model, there are a few different modes that you can use. So we'll talk about those. When you're in Revit, to find the modes, you go to the Analyze tab in the ribbon and then the Energy Settings button to launch the Energy Settings dialog, and that first setting is the mode for the energy model.

So, first, there was a Conceptual Masses mode. That's been retired. There's a Building Elements mode, which is legacy, but there are two modes that we're going to talk about in the class.

The first one is the Conceptual Masses and Building Elements mode. This one uses any combination of masses and building elements to generate the energy model. So it can be done at a higher speed earlier in the project, but it might have lower precision.

The other mode is Rooms or Spaces. So, when using this mode, you use either Room or Space objects that you've already created in the model. So there is more work involved. So it's lower speed to create the energy model, but it'll have higher precision.

So how is the Energy Analytical Model generated? I won't get too technical on this, but I just want to give you a mental model of how this works. So when you generate the energy model using the Rooms or Spaces mode, you start with just the 2D room or space outlines throughout the project or the model. And when you generate the energy model, it will extrude the outlines up to create the analytical spaces, and then the analytical surfaces are formed based on that.

When using the Conceptual Masses and Building Elements mode, you'll start with 3D building elements and/or conceptual masses. When you generate the energy model, what it does is it'll start in the center of every volume in the building and work its way out to find the bounding elements and use those to generate the analytical spaces. It'll also identify the bounding elements to generate the analytical surfaces.

So, looking at a typical timeline for a project, the Conceptual Masses and Building Elements mode can be used at any stage in the project. So this is preferred by architects who want to do a quick analysis at any stage.

The Rooms or Spaces mode is typically later in the project because you'll need to have all the room or space objects set up ahead of time and possibly using the different space types in different parts of the building. So this mode is preferred by engineers because there's a lot of engineering data that lives in the space types that can be used by the energy model. Now, in those, that data includes things like infiltration or lighting equipment load and occupancy, et cetera.

And, also, just a note that there's no reason you can't use either of these at any stage. It just depends on the detail level of your model.

So a little more information about the modes, due to the way that the energy model is generated when using the Conceptual Masses and Building Elements mode, it can be affected by imperfections in the model, for instance, gaps or openings. There are resolution settings for the analytical surfaces and the analytical spaces that help you to improve the generation of an energy model. Those settings are found in the Energy settings. So, to account for the imperfections, you can tweak the Resolution settings. It's just something that you'll have to play around with to see what works best for your model.

There are pros and cons to this mode. So for one pro, this is a more robust mode that can deal with the imperfections and still give you an accurate analysis. Also, you can use Masses and Building Elements in any combination, so it can be used to any stage, especially earlier in the conceptual stage.

As far as cons, depending on the model, your precision could be lower. And, also, if you're using space objects in the model and you want some data from that, when you generate the energy model, it's possible that the analytical spaces won't always match up with the space objects, depending on how the space objects are set up. So that's something to keep in mind because there could be inaccuracies in the data that comes across to the analytical spaces.

Then for the Rooms or Spaces mode, if you're using room objects, there's not as much data that comes with those. It's just the room name and room number. When you're using Spaces, this contains all of the engineering data in the space type, and that will come across to the analytical spaces.

There are pros and cons for this mode, also. There's a pro that this will create a precise airtight model because it's based on all of those rooms or space objects that you've already set up in the model.

There are cons. For instance, the model should be almost perfect with the spaces and room objects set up. So there can be quite a bit of work to do ahead of time when using this mode.

Also, this mode won't recognize the regular rooms, for instance, rooms that have a large bulkhead or irregular ceilings or inclined walls, due to the way that they're generated. Also, if there are small spaces or voids in the building, those may not be accounted for because they'll need either a room or space object. So there could be some of the building that's not accounted for in an analysis because of this.

Another con is that you need to use either rooms or spaces. You can't use a combination of the two. All right, so back to you, Simon.

SIMON WHELAN: Yeah. Thanks, Eric. So one thing, also, we just wanted to note was some materials. This is going to come in a little bit later. I think with regards to-- you know, we mentioned next-gen Insight, so there is some, in your Energy settings, there's the ability to start looking at the materials. The three different types in your Energy settings, there's conceptual types, the schematic types, and those detailed elements.

So just to talk on them just for a second, conceptual types, I believe, is the default. It's in the name. It's very conceptual, lightweight construction or high-mass construction or basic shades, et cetera. So just there will be associated properties aligned to that, but it's a very high-level type that you're selecting or that is being applied, by default, to the Energy Analytical Model.

You can select schematic types, where you can choose a makeup or a construction from a slightly more detailed list. It's in the Constructions XML that's part of the Revit install. And, in that setting, you can drop down and apply different types of roofs, walls, floors, et cetera, and certainly override them. So you're applying them instead of the conceptual types or them instead of the detailed model or the detailed elements that are in the model.

Or, indeed, the third type, which is, as I said, those detailed elements in the model. They're driven by the properties inherent in the family. So in this scenario here, we have a basic wall, and there are analytical properties aligned to it. We can go into some of the structural elements and start modifying them. So we can apply thermal conductivity or specific heat and reflectivity, or whatever that might be.

So, in that scenario, when you select the detailed elements, it will be taking those properties from the detail in the model. So there's a few different ways, and I did want to just highlight that and just put that in at this stage because we'll just touch on it in Revit.

Speaking those workflows, we'll be jumping into Revit, now. And, in Revit, we'll be looking at this particular project, which is the Snowdon Towers project. This is the Revit sample model that is part of the Revit '24 install, and you can see it's a kind of a building that has this old Heritage building, as such, with a new, more modern wing on it.

It's a pretty good Revit model. There's lots going on. Needless to say, lots in that model not ideal for an energy analysis point of view, right, because there's lots of different families. There's lots of different constructions. There's some gaps in it. There's floors that are roofs, and there's roofs that are floors, et cetera. And certainly there's loads and loads of site context and entourage, et cetera.

So the workflows that we'll be looking at will effectively be taking this model and starting to use it to drive some very quick analysis.

So the different workflows we'll be talking about will be, first of all, I'm going to just talk about very simple conceptual massing. I'm going to leave the Snowdon Towers model alone for a second, and we will just talk about a very simple conceptual mass and deriving an Energy Analytical Model from it. Then we'll apply to that Snowdon Towers model.

So we're going to link that model into an EAM template file that we have prepared and that you can download as one of the resources. We'll create a conceptual mass of the form of that building. It's a tricky form, but I think it's a good example of what we can do. And then we'll create an EAM from that conceptual mass.

Taking that a little bit further, then, we'll take that conceptual mass, and we'll start applying some detailed walls by face and roofs by face, et cetera. So, again, certainly, we won't have anything near the kind of detail in the actual model. We will quite quickly have something with a level of detail that you can do, again, very quick analysis and using your EAM from that conceptual mass and building elements in that case.

Then, taking it one step further again, we'll be manipulating the visibility settings of the linked model to isolate the building envelope or the building facade and running an Energy Analytical Model from both those elements and the conceptual mass that you can, again, use for Systems Analysis or Insight or FenestraPro, or whatever. And then we'll be talking about taking that EAM into next-gen Insight. We'll touch on those material properties so that we can start looking at, for example, embodied carbon in the next-gen Insight platform. And then-- oh, and also, just a note, a little bit more info on that is in, as I said earlier in Marta and Ian and Karina's class on Total Carbon Data, Analysis and Insights, which would be on the same AU23 site as this class.

And then, lastly, we're going to talk about FenestraPro a little bit. First of all, I'll give you some overview into FenestraPro, and then we'll look at a very quick workflow of identifying EAM issues and warnings on that full architectural model. So we're going to take 20 or 30 minutes to kind of do those very quickly. Right.

So let's go into a clean kind of Revit environment. We're going to start a new project. And, to start that new project, we're going to use this Energy Analytical Model template. OK. Remember we're doing workflow 1 here, so we're just going to look at a conceptual mass, just very simple conceptual massing, and running an EAM from that.

So we're going to choose that Energy Analytical Model template. We'll open that up, and we can see that we have something set up with visibility settings and with some schedules and some families, et cetera. And what we're going to do is just start creating a couple of levels and create a very, very simple conceptual mass.

I'm not going into any great detail here. The reason I wanted to show you this is just to kind of reiterate, really, how simple it is. You can really do this in a couple of minutes, that you'll see-- all going according to plan, of course. You'll see that I can do this quite quickly.

So I'm going to set up another couple of levels at about a 3.6 meter floor-to-floor height. And then I can start dropping in a conceptual mass. Right, so I can do this in the 3D model. I can do it in the floor plan. Actually, let's do it in the floor plan, just so we can set out the footprint.

So there's different drawing tools. I can choose it by lines or just create a rectangle or different arcs, et cetera. So, look, we'll just do a very simple line. We'll do just a very simple floor footprint that I'm kind of making up as I go. That might just look something very simple.

OK. So we have this very simple footprint. What we want to do then is it's as easy as just extruding it. Right? So we just give that some height. I can drag and drop like a lot of pretty good modeling tools, or I could certainly just type in the value that I want, in this case, 3.6.

OK, so there's one story of this building. Of course, I set up a couple more levels. So I can copy that mass, and I'll align it to levels 2 and 3 to give me a three-story building. Level 4 being my roof, I suppose. So, yeah, really quickly, we just have this very simple mass.

What I want to do now is just mass the floors, just so Revit knows that there is slicing through this form and there is actually floors within withing this that relate to those levels. And, pretty quickly, then I have something, then, that is good to go for-- let's be honest-- a very, very simple Energy Analytical Model, but an Energy Analytical Model nonetheless. So something that you can run certainly with FenestraPro, also with Systems Analysis, maybe with Insight, to get some just really, really early stage understanding. Right?

So launching my Energy settings. Eric talked about this a minute ago. We have different modes. The Building Elements is legacy mode, unsupported, not really changing that much, and not preferred. We have our Rooms and Spaces mode for quite detailed models. It certainly needs Revit rooms and/or spaces in there, and not appropriate for something like this. What is appropriate, though, is the Conceptual Masses and Building Elements mode.

Lots of other things I can do. I just kind of call your attention to two or three different things. I'm going to come back on Resolution, now, in a second.

But we can also divide this perimeter zone. And anyone in energy modeling will know what this does, and it will divide that perimeter back 6 meters or 5 meters or 20 feet, or whatever that might be from the face, from the facade. And clicking this on and off will divide the corners and divide and try and find that six meters back from every face of the building.

I'm going to tick this on just to show you kind of what happens here. And, from there, I'll just create the Energy Analytical Model. So just a very, very simple mass. So, therefore, it's going to be super quick.

Now, the first thing you see is obviously there's these kind of jaggedy lines. That's the nature of how this thing is created. The perimeter zones have created these kind of diagonals back from each corner, and there's funny things going on in each of the corners. And, in fact, you'll even see there's funny gaps that are starting to happen here. That's relating just how these things start being created.

We can maybe just delete that. We'll run it again. What I will do there, again, is maybe I'll just tick this one off, this perimeter zone, and I'll reduce my resolution. I think it goes turned down to 150-something, but I just dial in 160 for now, and I'll run this analysis again, create the Energy Analytical Model. And we'll see, hopefully, my spaces might have cleaned up somewhat.

OK. So, yeah, much cleaner. You can see, there, the perimeter zones are set back. There's not as much diagonals and jagged stuff going on. All my surfaces are lining up really nicely. So, certainly, plenty to use in terms of, as I said, different energy analysis tools and platforms. Just to show you, we're looking at the spaces here if I can just, real quick, we can set up different views on this. Oh, in fact, there should be a different view already set up, I think. Yeah, there's an Analytical Surfaces view set up there.

So, as Eric said, there's my spaces. There's my surfaces, my surfaces being color-coded almost for the different elements that they are. And, if I select one of those surfaces, I can see there has been analytical properties applied through the conceptual types. There is some information in there, not a huge amount of information, nothing on loading and nothing on gains and daylighting, et cetera, because they don't have that level of detail yet.

OK so that's workflow 1. Yeah, really handy to get started with And certainly, speaking from something like FenestraPro, a really great tool then to start looking at notional glazing to different orientations and how does that work. You know, shading, et cetera, when you locate the building and orientate the building.

Workflow 2, we're going to talk about something similar, but in a lot more of a real-world scenario. Right, so we talked about this Snowdon Towers model. I'm going to go back to this file. I'm going to actually just kill this file. I don't want any of this, and I'm going to start a new project.

Again, I'm going to choose the same template, but, this time, I want to link in that Snowdon Towers model. Now, as I said, we have a number of visibility settings set up already. So when you do link in that model, you should just really see what you want to see with regards to the envelope. And I'm going to lose this level, just so we can keep it as clean as possible.

I'll insert the Snowdon Towers model. And I do believe it's in my Revit Samples folder-- whoops. OK, Program, so Revit '24. I'm pretty sure it's in Samples. So, yeah, so here's a couple of sample projects. It's the Snowdon Towers sample architectural we talked about, so I'm going to open that.

It takes a few seconds to come in. And when it does come in, as I started saying, it comes in with those visibility settings in place. So we've created this view that it's just getting rid of all that entourage and all that site context and anything else. And, really, we should be just looking at an envelope.

Now, as I said at this a few minutes ago, this model is a decent model, but there's lots going on, as I suppose is there is in any real-world project. Right? But I get this scenario. I have my building. There's this old brick masonry building. There's the new wing with some metal panels.

There seems to be, which is a funny thing going on, there's some enclosed rooms, but there's definitely some open spaces up here that there's no glazing. So they're external spaces, even though they're inside the old building. It looks like they've done something nice there. So all of these things are things that we need to account for.

Now, going back to what I said at the start, is sometimes you don't have the time or the resources or you do want to do something quick in terms of feasibility or it's just a sort of a throwaway model that we're looking at optimization of the facade, or whatever that might be. So we're not really going to account for all of this, in particularly in this class today. So there's lots of limitations and there's lots of things that we're going to gloss over as part of these workflows, but just to kind of give you a sense of an approach here.

So the way we looked at this workflow is bringing in that model and then, certainly, just starting to create a mass from it. OK, so if we just, for example, went into this level one, we can then start just doing exactly what we did a few minutes ago in a really simple building, but we can use this as a reference to create a mass from. OK, so same drawing tools, we'll start just effectively tracing over this plan.

And I'm going to just do this really, really simply, just to make the point, and I'm not even going to be too careful about what I'm clicking, et cetera. There's some really cool ways that you can approach this, and we could just be very quick about it and do something like that. Right. So now we have a mass footprint.

And, again, just like we did earlier-- and there's a lot going on in this view, so we're not going to see it too well-- but just like we did earlier, we can start giving that a form, extruding that up. We can go in different levels and start manipulating different levels to start creating the form of this building.

Not going to get into it here. Obviously, we are time-constrained. So in time-honored, "here's one I made earlier" fashion, we kind of jumped straight through that. So we have the linked model, the Snowdon Towers model. We have a couple of views that I have just kind of lurking in the background, here, that I'll bring in in a second.

But here's a view as well that is just the mass. So, here, the visibility of the actual detailed elements are turned off, but we've created this mass, which kind of reflects, pretty well, the form of this building. It didn't take long to make, to build. Certainly not as quick as the very simple building I modeled a few minutes ago, but pretty straightforward, right?

The thing about this building is, though, because we see all these little kicks, we see all these little receding walls and we see these inclined facades, there's a lot going on here from an Energy Analytical Model creation point of view. Eric talked about the voxel method and how these things are created. So this would be an interesting one to start looking at.

So, yeah, like I said, we've created that mass from that view. We can then, very quickly, there's a number of things we can do. But just as part of this workflow, I'm going to turn off this link, for example, or unload this link, just so I just have the mass, and I'll run an energy analytical model from it alone.

We're going to analyze it to check our settings again, so Conceptual Massing and Building Elements, and we're not turning off that Perimeter Zone Division. Here's my advanced options that I can certainly get into, the material thermal properties, conceptual types, schematic types, et cetera. I'll just look at the Conceptual Types for now. Let's assume that these are fine. But if they're not, there's a little dropdown for fr different types of, as I said, interior walls exterior walls, et cetera.

Another one that's really important to note, I think, is the level. OK, so the ground plane is set to level 1. Anything that is below your ground plane is going to be treated as below grade. OK. So if, for example, for whatever reason you've selected level 3, it's not going to be an accurate Energy Analytical Model because half of the building will be treated as underground, right? So important to note that ground plane as well.

So hopefully this works, and we'll create the Energy Analytical Model from that. OK, great. So it worked. So you'll see, there, my couple of views, my analytical spaces and surfaces. So, as I said, there's going to be funny things happening here with the setbacks and those jagged edges. There's also funny things happening with gaps just on the facade, but, as I said, I knew that there was going to be issues around these inclined planes, these inclined surfaces and facades.

Again, it's not the prettiest, but it is quite comprehensive Energy Analytical Model from just a very simple conceptual mass. So, again, something that you can run energy analysis through Insight or FenestraPro, Systems Analysis, et cetera, quite well. OK, so that was workflow number 2.

We're going to talk about workflow number 3, which is effectively we're going to take that mass and just start applying some detailed elements, some Wall By Faces too, for example. You know? So let me just delete that energy model. I'm going to start taking this mass and just, in this Massing and Site ribbon, there is Model By Face. So I can start applying a wall to this mass, so a 300 millimeter basic wall, just for the purpose of this demo.

If I go into that type, I can see there is some analytical properties set here. Like we talked about a little earlier, we can go into the actual assembly and start manipulating and changing those thermal performances and change some of the detailed information within it. I'm not going to do that just now, but I am going to choose the wall and just start applying it to this mass. So I'll just choose that.

Here we go again. I'll choose that wall. I'll choose that wall, that wall, just a few of these walls randomly, just to sort of show exactly what Eric was talking about, that this truly is a conceptual mass with some building elements.

And, again, we'll just run a very quick energy analysis. Let me just change some of the resolution settings, just so you can see the difference in that. I'll just make that 1,000 rather than 160, and I'll apply that and run the Generate EAM.

And quite quickly, because of the resolution, there, we were able to come up with an EAM with some of that detail. Right? So if I, for example, choose that face or that surface, there-- ooh, there's a few warnings, so we'll talk about some of those warnings, now, in a few minutes. But if choose that surface, there, we'll see that it is that basic wall and has those types. OK. So that's just, again, just a quick way of taking your conceptual mass and taking it onto one step further.

Workflow 4 is a little bit more, I suppose, somewhere in between, right? So what we're going to do is take the Snowdon Towers linked model, we're going to turn on the facade, and we're going to use that detailed facade plus the conceptual mass to generate our EAM. As you can see from the image, it's going to be messy. But, again, let's not worry about how it looks. Let's worry about the data and the information that's held within it.

So let me go back and just sort of delete some of these walls that I had already created there a few minutes ago. OK, so basically what I want is get back to a clean mass. I'm going to turn my link back on.

OK, so there's my Snowdon Towers model, at least the envelope of it and the conceptual mass. I'm going to just check some of my views, visibility settings, here, just take a look. As I said, in this template, all of this stuff is turned off except from my curtain panels and systems, my doors, my floors, roofs, the mass, obviously, and walls and windows.

And just for the purposes of what we're doing now, I'm going to turn off a lot more of this stuff. So I'm going to turn off the roof. I'm going to turn off the floors. So I'm basically just leaving the facade, right. And, in fact, I'll even go a little bit further, and I'll turn off some of these wall, some of these sweeps, for example. So basically what I'll be left with is a quite trimmed-down model that I can generate an EAM just off the information that is in this model.

I'm just going to make sure that this linked model is room-bounding now so that the EAM will account for it in its generation. OK, so it is room bounding, so that's fine.

So, now, I'm going to just go in and delete that old energy model and run it again. So, as you can see now or as you'd expect, what we'll get is an EAM run off the mass generally as a form, but taking into account the detail of all of those facades. OK.

So, again, not the prettiest, and we see lots and lots of different surfaces going on. But my spaces are pretty well intact, you can see, when you start selecting them and highlighting them. They certainly are there, and that information is inherent within the spaces, Eric kind of walked through.

So, just really quickly, you can start using some of that architectural information from the architectural model, but turning it on and off, using your room bounding on and off, using some of your visibility settings and the energy settings, indeed, to really get something that's pretty robust in terms of energy analysis.

Workflow number 5, then, is just one step beyond that, and it's taken all of that kind of stuff and bringing it into Insight. Eric, do you want to talk through this one?

ERIC GREY: There it goes. So, for instance, when you select a wall, you can go into the type, and then that's where you can find the thermal properties if you're using the Detail Constructions. And, yeah, so here's where you turn on the Detail Constructions. From the Building Elements go ahead and create the energy model.

And then go ahead and send this to next-gen Insight, and that opens up. It takes a little while to run, so here's a previous run. And there's where you can see your construction information, like the walls with the thermal and the construction and materials used for your carbon analysis.

SIMON WHELAN: Yeah. So I suppose, in a way, the narrative is there from a really early conceptual form through to something a little bit more detailed, through to something quite detailed, through to bringing it to Insight to look at embodied and operational carbon and that total carbon impact of the building. So depending on the stage you're at, the level of detail of the model, the question you're asking, I suppose there's different workflows, there's different approaches, and there's different ways to get at this, and that's what we've been trying to just get across.

Just to talk about FenestraPro a little bit, and just move on to it very quickly, the last workflow I want to talk about, we are, as I said, a software development company in Dublin in Ireland, and we're Autodesk Industry Partners. Our tools are for facade design, as I kind of mentioned once or twice. And we've been lucky enough to provide software solutions for some of the largest architectural firms in the world, now, basically looking at facade design, glazing specification, and how that geometric and materiality impacts your energy efficiency and ultimately your carbon consumption. We, as I said, use the EAM extensively, and FenestraPro leverages that data in the EAM. So I suppose a well-rounded, robust energy analytical model is ideal for FenestraPro.

Just to start moving towards a close I'm going to just play this. It gives it an overview into FenestraPro as a tool and as a solution.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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SIMON WHELAN: OK, cool. So we will have got a sense of that, that obviously we, as I said, do use FenestraPro. Leverages that EAM, that Energy Analytical Model quite extensively. And users and customers of ours have tried using FenestraPro on lots of different models and lots of different stages of models. And depending on how good that model is or some of the problems and issues that we've talked about, here's 20 kind of big issues that we very often see when it doesn't work too well on a very detailed model.

So anything from room bounding elements is a big one, analytical properties not being applied to glazing or wall systems or whatever, lots of energy settings, we kind of talked about ground plane, perimeter zones, all of these things can really affect and impact that EAM generation.

So what we did in FenestraPro is we've created as part of our tool what we call an on ramp, which effectively just takes the architectural model and the EAM and starts allowing the user to visualize it and see some of the issues that are being highlighted. Right, so here's the architectural model being highlighted, and here's a list of issues. Right, so lots of glazing families with no analytical properties, walls with no thermal properties, for example.

You know, roofs we knew was an issue in that model we looked at earlier. There might be lots of glazing that has no properties. And, as you can imagine, FenestraPro uses those properties, U-value, solar heat gain coefficients, et cetera. But, really nicely as well, we can start visualizing the EAM and visualizing those analytical surfaces and spaces and visualizing floors and walls, et cetera.