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Embodied Carbon Calculations, Sustainability and Energos


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7 hours ago, Asemblance said:

4- Is the Energos module useful/accurate? And is it still being developed? There is not much information available on this online, apart from a few short videos (mostly from 2016). If anybody has used this a detailed review of its capabilities, and maybe a real life use example would be great.


I just did a search for ‘Energos’ on the Vw University portal and it returned ‘sorry - no courses found’.
 

Surely there has to be some in-depth Energos training videos (beyond those very short 2016 videos), especially since Energos was released over 4 years ago.

Edited by rDesign
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1 hour ago, rDesign said:


I just did a search for ‘Energos’ on the Vw University portal and it returned ‘sorry - no courses found’.
 

Surely there has to be some in-depth Energos training videos (beyond those very short 2016 videos), especially since Energos was released over 4 years ago.

 

It is surprising how little information is out there! At a time when energy efficiency and sustainable design are becoming hot topics, I'm amazed Nemetschek aren't making more of a song and dance out of the Energos tool..

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi all,

 

This is a very interesting topic and one I've been involved with increasingly. As a starting point, I'd like to say we will be doing a Service Select Webinar on Energos this Friday the 13th at 2.30pm. See description below:

 

Climate change and sustainable design is at the forefront of today's conversation. Integrated design tools can help you be more efficient and make quicker decision during the design phases.

During the webinar attendees will learn how to assess the energy performance for a building design very early on in an integrated design process using regular evaluations during the design process. This will give the Architects, the power of being able to make informed design decisions and some metrics to back those decisions up regarding sustainable and energy efficient design. 

 

Learning Objectives: 

Discover the benefits of integrating energy performance evaluation into architectural design workflow

Explore how building's form factor and shape affects it’s energy performance

Learn how various opening shading percentages and different types of shading can guide your design decision based on the expected building performance 

Evaluate energy performance changes based on building elements boundary conditions and U-values

 

If you are interested in Energos I would definitely recommend joining in, for anyone outside UK we will be doing a repeat for US in spring, probably around May.

 

On 3/5/2020 at 10:54 AM, Asemblance said:

Is the Energos module useful/accurate?

 

Yes, very useful and accurate, but of course the accuracy will depend on the input you provide to the plug in. I find it very useful in architectural design workflow as a tool that helps you track the performance of your building throughout the design process, from early stages to technical design. I will talk about this process in the webinar.

 

On 3/5/2020 at 7:23 PM, Asemblance said:

It is surprising how little information is out there! At a time when energy efficiency and sustainable design are becoming hot topics, I'm amazed Nemetschek aren't making more of a song and dance out of the Energos tool..

It's one of the things we are trying to address as well, particularly in the current climate (pun intended) and particularly as we have the tools that Architects need to design sustainable and energy efficient architecture.

 

On 3/5/2020 at 10:54 AM, Asemblance said:

3- As above, but for linking Specification of materials to Vectorworks models

Are you referring to an NBS spec here? With Vectorworks 2020 SP3 it will be possible to integrate models directly with NBS Chorus and objects with spec clauses.

 

On 3/5/2020 at 10:54 AM, Asemblance said:

Is there any plug-in, module, or functionality, which would help us to calculate embodied carbon in our Vectorworks models?

On the Embodied Carbon front, we have looked into this and we have developed a workflow to calculate embodied carbon, based on the ICE database from University of Bath so something similar to what H/B:ERT does, only not in the form of a plug in as of yet. We have things in the pipeline that will enable users to calculate Embodied Carbon in a much easier way.

 

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Hi @Luka Stefanovic,

 

This is really interesting - looking forward to the webinar on Friday.

 

58 minutes ago, Luka Stefanovic said:

With Vectorworks 2020 SP3 it will be possible to integrate models directly with NBS Chorus

 

Will this work on Mac too? I know chorus is cloud based but previous NBS plugins were windows only if I remember correctly.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@_James It will work on a Mac as Chorus is as you say cloud based and in a browser. Previously we were not able to integrate with them because they had only Windows based plug ins, but now they had gone browser based you will basically be able to open the browser from within Vectorworks and log into your Chorus account to link the Spec to the model

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  • 1 year later...

I've just skimmed https://www.hawkinsbrown.com/services/hbert and their GitHub repository, where there is a readme (https://github.com/HawkinsbrownArch/HBERT/blob/BR_WPF_Refactor/Wiki/190702_HBERT_UserGuide.pdf) pointing to this DATABASE, found in the circular economy website.  The ICE Database can be downloaded from the following webpage: https://circularecology.com/embodied-carbon-footprint-database.html. VWX really should look into this as a priority; Hbert is a free, open source bolt-on to Revit would be a reason to get and use Revit, which undermines VWX.

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On 3/10/2020 at 3:38 PM, Luka Stefanovic said:

"On the Embodied Carbon front, we have looked into this and we have developed a workflow to calculate embodied carbon, based on the ICE database from University of Bath so something similar to what H/B:ERT does, only not in the form of a plug in as of yet. We have things in the pipeline that will enable users to calculate Embodied Carbon in a much easier way."  

This was a year ago; are you at the end of the pipeline/ can you clarify how we do this?

On 3/10/2020 at 3:38 PM, Luka Stefanovic said:

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
14 hours ago, Asemblance said:

Any chance of a seminar / video on this now that its all operational?

 

There will be resources released in due course, for now I just wanted to share that it's out there and working! For now you can get in touch with me directly for more information and a demo before this is fully released.

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On 1/31/2022 at 5:14 AM, designosaur said:

I would like to access the VECC, but cannot open this file, can this be made available for VW2021? 
thanks 

 

Also having trouble with this tool in v2021. I get an older version of VW dialog and then an unrecognized file dialog. Screenshots attached. Is this a v2022 file?

 

Cheers

 

PWF

Screen Shot 2022-03-25 at 9.31.32 AM.png

Screen Shot 2022-03-25 at 9.31.43 AM.png

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  • 8 months later...

Dear @Luka Stefanovic, I was also wondering if this feature will be offered for users with earlier versions of Vectorworks. Our office is on 2020/2021 licences and would really like to try this out on a new house we have built to achieve the new future homes 2025 standards in the UK. From the download it looks as if the VECC file is a simply a vectorworks file, could this be saved as an earlier version (e.g 2020 Architect) and still work? Would there be any possibility of you sharing this is it is possible?

 

All the best,

 

Dan Ryder

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi @Dan Ryder VECC won’t work in 2020 because it’s based on Materials and quantity take-offs that haven’t really been possible before we introduced Materials. Vectorworks 2021 version is available as a standalone file to download but it has limited functionality as a first iteration of the calculator. Full version has been included since 2022 and can be found in preformatted worksheets. 

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