Cadalyst - November/December 2008 - (Page 42)

cadalystlabsreview New IES Plug-In for Google SketchUp Late this summer, IES announced a plug-in for Google SketchUp to enable building performance analysis directly from the popular model-authoring tool for building design. Like other IES plug-ins, the SketchUp product provides a toolbar that sits within the host application (see figure below), providing access to all IES tools from free VE-Ware to the VE-Toolkits and the full IES Virtual Environment. The plugin is compatible with the free Google SketchUp 6 as well as SketchUp Pro 6 versions (http://sketchup.google.com). Among other offerings, a new, free IES plug-in enables building performance analysis inside Google SketchUp. The Google SketchUp plug-in is a significant breakthrough in the availability of powerful and user-friendly environmental design tools. John Kennedy, a founder of Green Building Studio (recently acquired by Autodesk), often asserted that 90% of a building’s lifetime total energy performance was determined by decisions made in the earliest design phases — regarding issues such as massing, orientation, and fenestration. Tools that support quick, easy, and affordable performance analysis of building schemes at these earliest design phases can have the greatest positive effect on any new or remodeled building’s future energy footprint. By linking the power and ease of use of Google SketchUp model authoring to the full array of IES’ performance analysis tools, the IES SketchUp plug-in breaks new ground in BIM and VDC for energy and sustainability. Combining the free availability of VE-Ware and the free version of Google SketchUp offers the most compelling argument to date in favor of rigorous performance analysis of every building design at the earliest possible stages. Figure 3. IES VE-Toolkits, such as the Sustainability Toolkit, provide easy access to the calculations and analyses most relevant to green design. from occupant comfort to lifecycle cost and detailed HVAC system control network diagrams. As expected, these comprehensive capabilities incorporate support for sustainability analyses and green design principles and their country-specific manifestations such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification in the United States or Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) in the United Kingdom. However, there is a growing recognition that for sustainable principles to have an environmentally and economically meaningful effect on building design, those principles must be used at an earlier stage and a higher level of the overall design process than 42 the detailed engineering design stages and levels that were the target market for the full IES/VE. Accordingly, IES offers VE-Toolkits that package specific detail-level IES/VE functions in ways that make them more widely accessible, more affordable, and easier to use for building designers considering the early interaction of sustainability with a building design and for architects wishing to obtain more rigorous feedback regarding environmental/ sustainable impacts of their schemes earlier in the design process. The VE-Toolkit lineup includes a general-purpose Sustainability Toolkit (figure 3), which in turn incorporates support for the Architecture 2030 Challenge (www. architecture2030.org) that aims to incrementally reduce fossilfuel greenhouse-gas (GHG)–emitting consumption of new buildings in the United States to carbon neutral by 2030. Closer-at-hand energy and daylight improvements are the goal of IES’ LEED Toolkit, also based on ameliorating the underlying condition that nearly half of U.S.-based GHG emissions come from buildings — not car exhausts or factory smokestacks — while more than three-fourths “of all electricity generated by U.S. power plants goes to supply the building sector,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. To cite a single example, IES’ LEED Toolkit supports one-click calculation of building daylighting analyses to determine whether a given design option passes or fails LEED Section 8.1. Additional VE-Toolkits scheduled for release in 2009 include a Greenstar Toolkit and a BREEAM Toolkit that will support the BRE Environmental Assessment Method of the U.K. Building Research Establishment. Any sustainability analysis or calculation performed in any IES VE-Toolkit can be www.cadalyst.com cadalyst November/December 2008 http://sketchup.google.com http://www.architecture2030.org http://www.architecture2030.org http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - November 2008

Cadalyst - November 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Tech Trends: Designed after Our Own Image Budget-Conscious Workstations — 64-Bit CAD Power for Less than $2,500 Cadalyst All-Star Awards 2008 SolidWorks 2009 — 3D MCAD Software IES Virtual Environment 5.9 — Building Performance Analysis Software View Point: A Design with Teeth CAD Manager: CAD Manager’s Survey 2008 MCAD Modeling: Ask for What You Want AEC Insight: AEC Software by the Clock CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry: Hot Tips for Cold Days

Cadalyst - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.