Analyze Model in Insight

00:03

Now that I have my mass model created in Revit,

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I'm going to send it to Autodesk Insight for analysis and I can do that right inside of Revit.

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We're in Revit 2024 again.

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And from our recent files, let's click on option one, the model we created.

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This has the massing model and the floor plates with it.

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Now, in this particular view,

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we don't see the massing model because Revit had only temporarily enabled that when we created the massing model.

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So, let's go to our visibility graphics by typing in VG scrolling down to mass.

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And checking on mass.

00:49

So, we can actually see the mass model.

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Now, I could send this directly to Insight in its current state, but let's preset some of the conditions.

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On the analyze tab, we have our energy optimization panel.

01:05

And within that, I can click on energy settings to preset some of the unique characteristics of this building.

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I can set what mode it is, what my ground plane level is, which is level one,

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the project phase is new construction, and a variety of other options.

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Under my advanced.

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Let's click on other options.

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And here I can set some detailed information about the model.

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For example, a percentage of glazing required, my slither space tolerance.

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As I scroll down, I can click on what my outdoor air information is.

01:51

You can set those.

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I can accept my conceptual types as to what type of construction I'm going to be using.

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Currently, my schematic type is set to building.

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I can look at what that means.

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And basically, my construction type for building will consist of all these analytical construction types for the categories I click "OK".

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Accept that.

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I'm not making any changes. So, I simply click "OK" again.

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And "OK" once again to exit our energy settings.

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Now all these settings are going to affect how Insight does the analysis.

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Once we're on the Insight page.

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Speaking of that, let's go to the Insight page.

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To do that, I click on "Generate" in my energy optimization.

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A warning appears that Revit needs to generate an energy analytical model which can take some time.

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But for this simple mass model, it's not going to take very long.

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So, I simply accept that it's going to create the energy analytical model by clicking on that.

03:08

This is a cloud-based service.

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Therefore, I receive an email from Autodesk telling me that the file has been received for the analysis.

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When the analysis is complete I get another email from Autodesk informing me so.

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Telling me that the analysis is complete for model option one.

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And I can go into Insight to see the results.

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As I said, it doesn't take very long and it tells me that the process is complete,

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and the energy analytical model has been successfully created.

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I click "OK".

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To see the results on the energy optimization panel, I click on "Optimize".

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This will launch the Insight page on your default internet browser.

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In the top panel, we see our building form.

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It acts very similar to many of the Autodesk viewers. I can zoom in and out.

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I can go to first person. I have my view cube here.

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I can switch the top panel to my location to find the location that we've picked earlier,

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or I could toggle it back to my building form.

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Below that you see a variety of different panels,

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and you can rotate these pages to look at the variety of options I have for this particular aspect of the building.

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These panels are known as widgets that are related to the key performance indicators.

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So, I can see where my current building sits with regard to the various benchmarks,

05:03

specifically, the Ashray 90.1 and the architecture 2030.

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Up in the top corner here, you see what our building energy cost per square foot is.

05:19

So, uh right now I'm at $18.90 in energy costs per square foot,

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which is not bad compared to Ashray 90.1 or the architecture 2030.

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But still, we can improve upon that.

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And I do that by adjusting the various aspects within these widgets.

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Now, let's look at some of these widgets.

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If I scroll down, there is a widget for plug load efficiency.

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Let's click on that.

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Here, I can adjust my performance criteria to further reduce my costs.

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Now, this triangle indicates that this is the current state of my model for my plug load efficiency,

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but I can use these sliders at the bottom to adjust that.

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And when I do, you see the energy cost mean improves.

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So, I have a variety of options to play with to examine the various aspects indicated within these widgets.

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In essence, I'm basically determining my performance criteria for my Model.

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With the aid of these widgets, I'm using these to achieve particular energy cost performance.

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Let's close this particular widget.

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Next, let's look at lighting efficiency.

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Now, when I see this line that is not flat, that indicates that I have some choices to play around with this.

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Again, my triangle is my current state of my model and I can adjust these up and down.

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And as I do, Insight automatically calculates the energy cost mean for this particular widget.

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Looking at the tool tips that appear, as I hover over these dots, at the high end,

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setting it up to 20.45 watts per meter squared, I will increase my cost by $3.37.

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The low end, I can reduce my cost by $1.79.

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Let's close out of the lighting efficiency panel.

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And let's look at operating schedule.

07:50

Now, since my triangle is all receptive low end as I slide this, it's not really going to make any difference.

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I can close out of that widget.

08:00

Let's go up and see what our current tally is.

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It's not set to 13.8.

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We've already reduced it to some degree.

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Let's look at some other things.

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For example, window glass for my south, my triangle indicates that I can't go too much further.

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If I do reduce my window set, I can reduce it a little bit, but maybe for design purposes, I want to increase it.

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So again, this will indicate what the cost of that design decision might be.

08:32

I'm going to leave it at the current value.

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So, no changes and therefore no changes in design either.

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A variety of other aspects we can look at.

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Let's look at wall construction, scroll down to wall construction.

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Oh. My triangle currently is quite high.

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And I can see what will get affected as I reduce my wall construction thermal loss.

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Let's set that up to this ratio right here.

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R13 plus R10 metal, I'm going to save $3.47 per year per square meter.

09:22

Accept that.

09:25

Let's look HVAC system.

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Currently, it's quite high based on the criteria that we set up in the massing model within Revit.

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Let's change that all to a High Efficiency Package Terminal ACunit.

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That reduced it quite a lot.

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Well, I can keep going like that.

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Any of these panels I can flip over again.

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Let's look at window shading for the south.

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That can always be a very interesting architectural design, but it's more or less flat line.

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So, I'm not really going to gain very much with that.

10:02

So, I'm not going to make any changes to that.

10:05

We can go through all these panels.

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One thing I want to look at is orientation.

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The location I'm currently at doesn't make too much difference.

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Let's just slide it down a little bit more.

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So, it's facing uh zero degrees.

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It looks pretty good.

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Now, all these changes I'm making do not affect the Revit model.

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I have to make note of the things that I'm changing and then go back to the design team within Revit,

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the mechanical engineers, the HVAC systems,

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and let them know how we can optimize this design based on these insights within Insight.

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So, I'm doing quite well. I'm down to $9.72

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and I'm in the orange zone.

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I could reduce it further by chipping away at it.

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But at this preliminary design, I would say, let's take that back into Revit,

11:03

make the adjustments necessary, and start furthering our design.

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At any point, we can bring that back into Insight for some further analysis.

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Before we exit Insight let's head back to the Insight page,

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and record the changes that we made so that we can always look at this for analytical purposes.

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Currently, we see that these are all the uncategorized models that were generated.

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So, I'm going to go back to my main Insight page and I'm gonna create an Insight,

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which is basically creating a folder.

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And I'm going to add my current option one to it,

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and the analysis that I did previously with option dash one.

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I click that.

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Now, it's untitled. It created a folder, but it's untitled.

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So, I can click on these ellipses and rename it to headquarters.

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I can also click on the ellipses to add new models to this,

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or I could upload a picture of the current site or perhaps the client's name,

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anything that will make it easier to identify this particular model.

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When I click on headquarters, and because I have two models in here, I have a comparison between the two.

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So, you can imagine as you keep going with this,

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you're going to gather more and more models and especially as the model matures and develops,

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we can have a detailed view of our energy consumptions.