Chapter 10: Conceptual Design and Sustainability

Embrace sustainable design concepts. Understanding the concepts behind sustainable design is an important part of being able to perform analysis within the Revit model and a critical factor in today's design environment.

Master It What are four key methods for a holistic sustainable design?

Solution Four key methods for a sustainable solution are (1) understanding a building's climate, (2) reducing building loads, (3) using free energy when possible to power those loads, and (4) using efficient systems.

Leverage schedules. Using schedules in Revit helps you track many of your design elements throughout the whole design process. These schedules can also be used to validate programmatic information during conceptual design.

Master It Explain how to create a schedule from a conceptual mass that will show the programmatic areas for each floor level.

Solution After the mass is created, insert it into the project. Select the mass and from the Modify | Mass tab, click the Mass Floor button and apply floors to the mass. Finally, create a schedule of mass floors showing Level and Area.

Use sunshading and solar paths. Understanding the effects of the sun on a building design is a critical way to create and form space. Revit has tools to help you identify how the sun will affect the design and where shade and shadow will fall inside and outside the building over the course of the year.

Master It How can you use the tools in Revit to produce still and animated solar studies from interior and exterior views in order to understand shading and the sun's effect on the building and space?

Solution Use the Graphic Display Options dialog box to set the global location of the project. Next, establish a time of day to view the effects of the sun. Create key interior and exterior views of the project and apply these sun settings to the new views. To see the effects of the sun at that time throughout the year, animate the solar study for each week throughout the year.

Prepare and export your model for energy analysis. Being able to predict a building's energy performance is a necessary part of designing sustainably. Although Revit doesn't have an energy modeling application built into it, it does have interoperability with many applications that have that functionality.

Master It Explain the steps you need to take to get a Revit model ready for energy analysis.

Solution

1. The building has to have walls, floors, and roofs. Those all need to meet and join so there are no unrealistic gaps in the model.
2. Make sure each of the regions in the model has a room element inserted into it and the room element's height is set to the bottom of the floor above.
3. Under Area And Volume Calculations, turn on Room Volumes.
4. You're now ready to export the model to gbXML and import that into an energy analysis application.

Analyze your project for daylighting. Not only can proper daylighting in a building save energy, but it can make the inhabitants happier and healthier. Through analysis, you can now quantify the amount of light you're getting in any space and measure the footcandle readings before you begin building. This allows you to iterate the design-making modifications to maximize your daylight while balancing the amount of glazing against solar heat gain and mechanical needs.

Master It Understand how much daylight you need to perform certain tasks. How much daylighting is needed for the following?

• Working in an office
• Reading a book
• Working on or reading something small for an extended period of time

Solution

• 25 footcandles is the average needed as defined by the USGBC.
• 15–40 footcandles depending on the print size.
• 200–2000 footcandles depending on the size and task.