Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Introduction
Although it is possible to carry out analysis on buildings entirely generated in ECOTECT, modeling the building can be a laborious task and requires the user to learn an entirely new set of modeling tools. This is not the primary function of the application so it makes sense for the user to import geometry created from their CAD application, then analyse and manipulate the model, to improve the design and test for regulation compliance so that the necessary changes to the model can be made in their CAD system. ArchiCAD and ECOTECT work well together as ArchiCAD produces a well structured Building Information Model, that is based on the same fundamental components that are required to carry out the analysis. Figure 1 shows the level of information that is required to carry out different types of analysis. The red line denotes the need for thermal zones to be created and that simple geometry will not suffice. It is important to note that although you can carry out Daylight analysis on a geometric model the time taken to get the model ready means the geometric export is only used for specific requirements.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Fig 2 Sculpture Rachael Whiteread. Fig 3 Geometry equired for ECOTECT analysis. The export from ArchiCAD shown in figure 4 is of a thermal model that has been imported into ECOTECT. It shows clearly a very clean import. This allows the Architect to concentrate on the important building analysis and not the painstaking clean up task.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Combined Export
If you were working out the daylight factors of a room and had either a model of the existing buildings or other elements that could have a corresponding effect on the daylight factor, then you can do the following: ArchiCAD process: 1. 2. 3. Export the main model as a gbXML file (thermal zone model) Turn off all the other information that is not required or has already been exported. Save these additional elements from the 3D window as a geometric model (*.3ds) (File>Save As).
ECOTECT process: 1. 2. 3. Open the gbXML file. Select Open again and choose the 3ds file. Note that the current open dialog (Figure 6) has the option to Import Into Existing which will merge the data of the two files (you also have the option to Open As New). Merge the 3DS file with the current model.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Fundamentally the gbXML add-on has an algorithm that automatically adds ArchiCAD zones to the model. When saving the model to gbXML the add-on asks the user, which zone categories to export.
Zone Categories
The export requires the user to select two zone categories to differentiate the rooms from the buildings outline. 1. 2. Access the zone categories from the Options> Element Attributes > Zone Categories. Create zone categories i.e. Ecotect Building Zones and Ecotect Rooms
Create suitable colors for the zone stamps so that the two categories can be differentiated, when seen in the 3D window. Note: Add custom colors so that they can be selected in the next step when defining the materials.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ensure in the favorites preferences that the Height, Base level, and ID are checked so that they do not change applying to zones.
Reveal Depth
Ensure that when generating Zones in ArchiCAD reveal depths are not taken into Account. 1. 2. Access Options > Project Preferences > Zones. De-check the Add Wall Recesses to Zones for both Doors and Windows as shown in figure 11.
Note: When automatic zone creation is used then the zones do not take into account reveal depths. However if the zones are subsequently selected and updated or have been added manually then they will include the reveal depth. You can rerun the zone update command after de-checking these values.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
When the export is created it takes what is called the space boundary that traces the internal surfaces of the walls. Although it creates the shape correctly the space boundary does not include the windows and doors as these are offset. When exported to Ecotect it understands that doors and windows exist in the particular walls, but does not know where to put them, so they are placed at the centre of the walls space. Figure 12 and 13 shows the export with and without reveal depth preference on. Figure 13 clearly shows the door placed in the incorrect location.
Layer Combinations
To ease the export and display the Ecotect zones in ArchiCAD views, set the following layer combinations: Ecotect Export Used for exporting the zones as a GBXML file. Only Zone Ecotect Room and Zone Ecotect Building layers are on. Ecotect Model Wireframe Used for visualizing the placed room zones in the context of the building model. Set the model information to wireframe with Room zones as solid and Building zones turned off. Ecotect Reference 3DS Model Used for 3DS export used as environmental reference model merged in Ecotect. All Zone layers are turned off. Ecotect Room zones only Only Room zones on. Ecotect Building zones only Only Building zones on.
Visibility of Zones in 3D
Ensure that by default that zones are visible in the 3D window. This can be done by accessing View > Elements in 3D view > Filter Elements in 3D.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Manual method
Place room zones in each room ensuring that the floor-to-floor heights are correct. Then place a building zone on each level of the building that traces the external building line.
Note: Do not take into account roof overhangs, as these will be picked up automatically. If the building is consistent across all floors then just a single building outline on the base floor can be added, then extend this to cover the entire height of the building. If you run the automatic method a few times across multi story buildings you will understand where to add the building zone.
Automatic method
If done automatically then just choose the Place Zones from the Design/Design Extras pull down menu.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Good example of this is shown in the Figures 16 and 17 where figure 16 is a typical scheme model. The model shown in Figure 17 is the same building just simplified for the export to ECOTECT. This ensures that elements are contained to one room only enabling correct generation of the ECOTECT zone model.
Complex profiles
Only model the building using basic ArchiCAD components i.e. do not use the complex wall profiles as these will not work with the current gbXML export.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
10
The model shown in figure 19 still creates windows that are the full height of the walls and this causes problems when imported into ECOTECT. The windows or openings should be enclosed at least 1mm around each of the edges. This problem can be clearly seen in the figure 20 by the imported model in where the problem components are highlighted by ECOTECT in red. This color is only used for problem items in ECOTECT so that they can be clearly identified.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
11
Fig 21 Exporting zones to gbXML 3. 4. 5. Select the Categories and layers to export. (Check both the boxes for Categories and layers for both Room Zones and also Exterior Zones). The option to select just by category enables other zones to be exported to gbXML that may have been defined on another layer. Drag and drop the file to the ECOTECT interface. (Drag the saved gbXML file to either the 3D Editor tab or the Visualise tab. The summary page is an html editor and as such will show the content of the file in text format.) Select Open from the File menu, (ensure that you change the file type in the open dialog to all type as xml is not a specific file type in ECOTECT).
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
12
The dialog shown in figure 22 opens to show you the number of zones (on the left) that will be imported. The left hand side of this dialog shows the technical information of the gbXML file including the materials used and coordinates for each zone. This is of less importance than the information on the right, which shows the materials used in the ArchiCAD model and how these are to be mapped to ECOTECT materials. The first column shows all the fills (walls, slabs and roofs) and door and window object names used in the ArchiCAD model. By default ECOTECT guesses the default material for these common elements. This means that the system will assign the default wall, floor, roof, window, door and void for any element that fits this description. You do have the option to change these assignments by clicking on the Guess text and then picking Select Material from the list. When confronted with the dialog shown in figure 23: Change the type from the drop down list at the bottom to see the options available for the selected element type. Select the required material from the ECOTECT library and then every element of this type will be imported with this mapping as shown in blue in figure 24.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
13
Fig 24 User Material Assignment Design is generally an iterative process and therefore it is unlikely that this will be the only export of this model to ECOTECT. However you have mapped the materials as shown in the previous example, you can save these assignments by clicking the Save button at the top of figure 24 and saving a Material Translation List (*.MTL). These specific material assignments can then be loaded each time a design change is applied to the model and it is re-imported into ECOTECT. To import the model click Open as New.
This keeps the analysis model simple and easy to work with but gives the complexity that is needed for overshadowing.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
14
Navigating in Ecotect
Hold down the right mouse button and drag to orbit. Hold down the middle button and drag to pan. Roll the middle mouse button to zoom.
Fig 25 overlapping surfaces and different materials By assigning Primary and Alternate materials the inter-zonal adjacency calculation calculates the correct quantities of each of the materials based on the overlap. It is important to note that where the overlap occurs the materials for both zones alternate material should be the same.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
15
Another example of this can be seen here where the surface for one zone is a roof but for the other is a floor.
Fig 26 more examples of the need for primary and alternate materials To fix these zones: 1. 2. 3. Select all the zones in question. Select the material type as shown below to the Primary type. Then pick the primary materials below from the list.
Fig 27 Changing Primary and Alternate Materials Then repeat step 1 from above, but this time: 4. 5. Select the Alternative material type from the list above. Then pick the material from the bottom panel.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
16
Element Information
The ECOTECT main palette (control panel) on the right of the screen (top icon arrow) shows information about the selected object. It displays key information such as Element type, Assigned primary and alternate materials. Zone it belongs to.
Where curved walls are used they are imported faceted. This is not an issue until there is either a window or door in this wall. Figures 32 and 33 show this issue. The user must ensure that the window segments fit the wall segments. First make sure that the window and door elements are linked to the corresponding wall surface. Make sure that they are contained within the wall. If not, they will appear red.
When the window is the same size or narrower than the wall segment then this is not an issue as shown in figure 28 where the window has been made a child of the parent wall.
But in figure 29 the window is larger than the wall it occupies. It indicates the problem by turning the window element color to red.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
17
To fix the issue in Figure 30 select the window and then from the right click menu select Set Child Extents.
Fig 30 Controlling child extents Make sure that the Show Values As is set to Absolute Edge Inset. Change both the left value and right value of the edge offset to 1. This will reduce the window so that the edge is 1 mm from the edges of the wall segment. Click Apply to see the result. Repeat for any items that have the same issue.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
18
Fig 33 Materials dialog in ECOTECT There are 3 main tabs for manipulating the materials in ECOTECT, which are Properties, Layers and Acoustics. These are described below.
Properties
The values in this tab in the Element Library dialog define the major performance properties of the selected material: Material name to create a new material select an existing one and rename it. Then click Add New Element to add it to the list on the left side located by its base definition type. Description enter a description for the material. Building Element type Select the type of element that the material represents. Values type Select the unit type associated with element. Environmental impact This section defines how costs and environmental impact are apportioned. Thermal information Some of the information here is a summary of what the layers tab shows such as the calculated U value. You can override this value for testing purposes to see the effect of an improved material.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
19
Surface based information Set the material colors and other properties. These values will have effect on calculations such as internally reflected light values.
Layers
The right side of this dialog shows the properties of the element selected on the left. Materials A full list of individual materials can be found in the scrollable list to make up a new element. The user can filter the list by choosing the Type from the pull down list above. The image on the right shows the build up of the element. The layering information allow you to add elements (drag and drop from the above list) or overwrite/replace (drag while holding the CTRL key) from the materials list. You can change any of the defaults such as Width, Density from the items in the table. Once the material has been defined, click on the Calculate Thermal Properties button under the material list and the new U value will be generated. New default materials can be added to the list by clicking the small arrow to the right of the types list and selecting Edit Material Data. Change the data here, and click Add As New button.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
20
Acoustic Properties
The acoustic tab (figure 36) shows the absorption coefficients for the different frequencies of a material and this data should be available from all material manufacturers. Creating a new material, dragging the values and testing the acoustic properties enable you to understand what kind of properties of a material that you require.
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
21
ArchiCAD is a registered trademark of Graphisoft. ECOTECT is a registered trademark of Square One research Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
22