Sustainable – Green Architecture Using BIM

These notes are about a building design course for tech college students. The design program calls for sustainable-green renovation of an existing building, Fire Station No. 1 in Apple Valley Minnesota. Software tools include Revit Building Information Modeling (BIM), Autodesk Green Building Studio (GBS) energy analysis, and other software. A framework for organizing and evaluating information will be provided by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System (www.usgbc.org).

Teaching this course involves Green Building Studio plugin for Revit Architecture. We may use Sketchup with IES plugin as well. Our efforts will be outlined in posts below.

AVFS Proposed Addition

View from Southwest Corner

Model by Dan Starr, Rendering by Ben Poythress

Winter quarter students developed the initial design for Apple Valley Fire Station #1. They modified envelope insulation assumptions, increasing roof insulation for the entire building and not adding insulation to existing walls. The addition is masonry and steel frame clad with insulated metal panels. Curtainwall is a high-performance system with low U-Factor. HVAC systems for occupied areas are proposed to be geothermal heat pumps connected to the adjacent storm water retention pond. Initial envelope assumptions were established using Revit with Green Building Studio plug-in. Additional modeling of envelope and HVAC will be pursued in this course by the next quarter class.

Apple Valley Fire Station #1 Addition & Renovation

Proposed Accessible Addition at South End

Revit model by Daniel Starr.

Apple Valley Fire Station #1 Addition

Daniel Starr produced a Revit model of the addition our class designed. We are currently developing the design and prepping the model to run Green Building Studio.

Proposed Entrance Addition to AVFS

Revit MEP New Features

Revit MEP New Features are worth a quick look if only to compare to Revit Architecture. After endless download (not complaining Owen), I pulled out a few New Features screens to peek at MEP Spaces and Zones. Some screens show that MEP also includes rooms. Sorting out exactly how spaces, zones, and rooms are used for GBS analysis will take trial runs.

Heating and Cooling Loads Based on Building Area and Volume

The paragraph above refers to loads for spaces, zones, and levels; it does not mention rooms.

Spaces shown above look the same as rooms only green instead of blue.

Spaces and Zones coordinate with Green Building Studio template tabs.

This illustration of room volume matches rooms in Revit Architecture. I wonder if MEP Spaces are interdependent MEP Rooms? My guess is no. Rereading the pdf with MEP instructions for Green Building Studio would probably answer this question.

Room definitions and tags are needed for equipment schedules and coordination with architectural documents, so it seems logical to define rooms and spaces separately. Rooms are for organizing equipment information; spaces, for energy analysis.

Next: Create a generic box in Revit MEP, export to Green Building Studio, and run analysis; then try importing a fire station model. I wonder what Nick Schorr is doing next week?

Green Building Studio Mastered by Schorr Group

Nick Schorr and his group successfully ran Green Building Studio analysis on an updated model of the Apple Valley Fire Station yesterday. Encountering problems with their original model, they repeatedly stripped out complex elements and tried to export to GBS. After at least a half-dozen tries the model still returned error messages.  They started from scratch with a new, simpler model adding complexity with each successive run of GBS. This approach worked. Details of Schorr Group efforts as well as daring exploits of Ryan Group and The Owenites deserve separate pages on this site. I await postable images.

I have been wondering if a series of short instructional videos might jump-start people new to Green Building Studio. With my new headset mic I feel ready — sorry no hip-hop.

Green Building Studio Templates

Green Building Studio uses templates to analyze Revit models. You can define multiple templates describing different combinations of enclosure and substructure R-values and U-factors. Then you run GBS analysis using a different template for each run. Finally, you view reports showing how many SUVs of energy each version of your model consumes. It sounds simple and it is — once you get past somewhat confusing screens that define templates. When you have defined one or more templates appropriate to your model, you can quickly run GBS analysis and fine-tune your design concept by adding alternatives to the default template on-the-fly.

Project Screen: Click on Tool symbol (blue circle on left side)

Templates Screen: From here it gets complicated

Using templates you can control separately roof, wall, and floor R-values as well as door, window, and skylight U-factors. You are limited to defining one space type for the entire building. My runs show that different space type definitions have significantly less impact on SUVs than envelope R-values and U-factors. Maybe it is not so important to define different space types for this quick analysis.

Next: update the AVFS existing model (office addition), run GBS on the existing model to establish a baseline.

On hold: eQUEST & instructional videos

Green Building Studio to eQUEST

Overview: Green Building Studio is an energy analysis tool suitable for schematic design; eQUEST is a similar tool for design development. Refer to this Autodesk document for more: revit_gbs_equest_workflow

Generic03, a Revit generic fire station model with doors and windows has successfully exported from Green Building Studio (GBS) to eQUEST.  My goal at this point is simply to try export/import and see what comes out at the eQUEST end. Ultimately, it may be useful to export the actual Apple Valley Fire Station model into eQUEST for a more detailed energy analysis than GBS can provide. For now, I am attaching screen shots from eQUEST showing the imported generic model.

GBS exports a *.inp file imported to eQUEST *.pd2 file

GBS model geometry imported into eQUEST

GBS wall, roof, slab etc. imported to eQUEST

GBS rooms imported to eQUEST

Last Summer, before getting into Green Building Studio, I used eQUEST to create a building model from scratch. After working through 40+ screens of input, I wondered if there is a simpler way to model energy performance. GBS is the answer. Working with GBS and eQUEST is not an either/or proposition. They should be used in sequence: first GBS, then eQUEST. Read the Autodesk document linked at the beginning of this post for a fuller explanation.