Exercise 5-2: Changing Energy Settings

After the solar analysis, you can see how the sun is affecting the mass and can take some steps to change the design.

This exercise will cover how to control the energy settings of each surface or space individually. Through a schedule, you will organize the facades in response to the results of an analyzed Energy Model. This will enable you to quickly toggle and test different target glazing ratios, conceptual constructions, and energy settings. These settings simulate abstract factors that influence the energy model like heat generation, material properties and insulation.

The aim is to strategically group surfaces that will need similar design solutions like integrated solar shades or a particular material property (conceptual constructions) by orientation.

Facades By Orientation

It may become useful to create a schedule to manage all of your façade faces as they may become too complex to pick individually. To do so, start by creating a schedule that contains all of the mass surfaces in it similar to how we created a Mass Zone Schedule.

This will enable you to quickly assign different conceptual constructions and target glazing percentages. A spreadsheet format that has direct interrelated connections with the model is a great way to edit program assignments iteratively. You can duplicate the model into a new design option to save your original settings while pursuing alternative options.

Alternatively you can easily change settings from the model directly by using the Tab button to select each surface. Once selected, navigate to Properties Setting Properties. The advantage of creating a schedule, however, comes with managing much larger amounts of surfaces through filtering them by type, or any other property.

As per the understanding of the Ecotect Solar Radiation Study, you can change the amount of glazing of the areas that are the most exposed to the sun. You also have the option to test if they are shaded or not. Since you are working on a per surface basis, you can individually change all of the southern faces first, reducing the amount of glazing and enabling shading.

For a full list of the changes made to each design option, open up the Mass Surfaces Schedule.

Analyzing the Energy Model

To run a test of the options that have been set up, click Analyze tab Analyze Energy Model. This will send the model information to Autodesk's cloud-based service, that will in turn generate an energy report. The CEA Results and Compare exercise will discuss how to compare multiple analyses side-by-side.