It is Alive in the Lab

Solar Radiation Technology Preview Update

[Ben Cochran writing for Scott Sheppard while he is on sabbatical]

People using Revit® Architecture 2010 Update 2 and Revit® MEP 2010 Update 2 have been asking about the Solar Radiation Technology Preview on Labs. The previous preview supported Revit® Architecture 2010 Update 1, but not Update 2. Based on feedback received, the Solar Radiation Technology Preview has been updated to support Update 2. So if you have Revit® Architecture 2010 Update 1 or Update 2 and are interested in Solar Radiation Technology Preview, visit Solar Radiation Technology Preview

Keep the feedback coming,

Ben Cochran, Autodesk Labs

Got a design challenge? Ask Nature, Thank a Genius!

 

RMI 2009

This past weekend I [Brian Mathews] attended the excellent RMI 2009 Conference.  RMI is the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is a non-profit think-tank formed in 1982 concerned with promoting an economically favorable path towards sustainable design and energy efficiency.  As founder Amory Lovins puts it: "It is cheaper to save fuel than to buy fuel, and your investment returns are guaranteed."

Autodesk's CEO, Carl Bass, was on an all-star panel with Amory Lovins, and several other luminaries I'll blog about later.

Asknature.org

One panelist was Janine Benyus, a founder of the Biomimicry Institute (third from the right in the picture).  What is Biomimicry? it is the idea that many of the design challenges you face every day have already been solved by 3.8 Billion years of evolution.  Janine's great idea is that while biologists have tons of information about organisms, that information was organized by organism rather than by function.  She started the non-proffit Ask Nature to organize the biology world's data in a form more useful to designers, engineers, and architects: by function for industry.

Need a non-toxic way to color the outside of your home?  Need a way to deal with rainwater?  How do I keep pipes from clogging?  What's the most lightweight shape for a car that is still strong?  All these questions can be answered by gaining inspiration from organisms who have field tested the approach for 3.8 billion years.  So if you have a design challenge, why not Ask Nature?  And if you find a solution, be sure to thank a Genius (a living organism who gave you the inspiration).

After the panel, I got to spend 90 minutes talking to Janine and hearing the most incredible examples of how vairous organisms have solved industrial problems.  One client of theirs had industrial pipes that were eventually clogging due to scale that formed inside.  She helped them learn how seashells form, and more importantly how organisms stop their shells from growing once the desired shape is realized.  The chemistry in pipes is almost the same, and now there is a natural protein that keeps the pipes clear.

Every time I meet Janine I come away energized and inspired.  Check out her TED videos too.

Solar Radition Technology Preview Not Compatible with Revit Service Pack 2

The Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit is available for download from:

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ecotect/

With the recent release of Service Pack 2 for Revit, the combination of the technology preview and the service pack results in:

Since I am on sabbatical right now, my participation is limited; however, rest assured that I did pass this information on to the Solar Radiation Technology Preview team. For the moment, you may wish to complete your evaluation of the technology preview and send resulting feedback to labs.revit.ecotect@autodesk.com before applying Service Pack 2. Ideally the team would provide an update, but I am not sure of their plans (since I am out of the office).

-- Scott Sheppard

Updated Solar Radiation Technology Preview Now Available

Based on your feedback, on Friday of last week we released a minor update to the Solar Radiation Technology Preview:

Free Download of the Solar Radiation Technology Preview on Autodesk Labs

Keep those emails coming in. You have until January 13, 2010 to make your feelings known. The heat is on.

Updating technology previews is alive in the lab.

P.S. We are aware of the issue related to true north. We especially want you to keep feedback like that coming in.

Over 2500 Revit Families Available

Michele Bousquet reports that the Revit Market catalog, TurboSquid, recently made it to 2500 Revit families for sale, by users and for users. Here is the press release:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2626534.htm

When she started Revit Market six months ago, Michele surveyed users extensively about what they wanted. Hands down, they wanted good stuff that flexed right, but also a quality guarantee if they were going to spend money. That translated into the TurboSquid Certification program which has been very successful. Now that they have 2500+ assets, Michele would like to invite all Revit users to come and have a look at their catalog.

Incidentally, Michele also mentioned that Entourage items are the big sellers. Though some doors and windows sell, the biggest business is with furniture, plants, and decorative accessories.

We at Autodesk Labs love it when something that started on labs, Content Search alpha, blossoms into production, Autodesk Seek, and grows to include partnerships (TurboSquid). It all started with your feedback. Thanks for shaping the ecosystem around Revit.

Autodesk Revit Solar Radiation Technology Preview Now Available

Solar radiation analysis is one of the ways architects can consider ecology when creating their designs.

"Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it's all right."
  "Here Comes the Sun," George Harrison, The Beatles, Abbey Road, 1969.

Product Manager for Sustainable Design in the AEC community, Vidisha Salunke, got me a new utility for Revit users. I was happy to place it on the Autodesk Labs site. She also gave me the following blog article. Read on.

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Designing for sustainability requires many analyses, and an understanding of the incident solar radiation on a building façade is one of those analyses. It is particularly compelling to be able to do this analysis from within Revit. The new Solar Radiation Technology Preview allows users to study incident solar radiation on a building form within the conceptual massing environment available to all Revit Architecture and Revit MEP users. There are many examples of how the information can be used, but some of the common ones are:

• 
  Studying how incident solar radiation on the façade of a specific form differs by orientation. This could be as simple as analyzing a basic rectangular form. It is easy but important to look at incident solar radiation on pitched roofs to understand the impact of various roof pitches and nearby shading elements early in the design process if solar panels are being considered.

• To understand the relative importance of glazing for daylighting and solar heat gain of the building, it is useful to quantify the difference between the incident solar radiation that occurs on the lower floors vs. the higher floors of a tall building. This is especially significant in an urban context. Studying incident solar energy is one step towards understanding what types of glass might be appropriate different façades or floors. If the solar radiation on the north façade or lower floors is much lower than the flux on the southern or high floors, varying glass type and performance by face may be appropriate.

• Much of the analysis associated with low carbon building design and sustainability is very numerical and not visually compelling. The solar radiation add-in is a great way to provide visual feedback within the context of a design whether as a means to communicate a design choice, or as part of a presentation.

It is worth repeating here that analyses for sustainability, including solar radiation analysis, should be done very early in the design process, and then repeated as needed when the form and design evolves. This new technology preview is available within the massing environment, which facilitates its early use. The user chooses a weather file which contains the raw solar data required for the analysis, then chooses a date and time range for the analysis, and finally selects the surfaces to be analyzed. The user has the ability to set the number of divisions or tiles that a surface gets sectioned into for the analysis, with the associated computation time implications. The results can be displayed as cumulative, peak or average values in user chosen units. The computation time varies depending on the calculation resolution, but examples shown here take approximately 10 seconds for the simplest analysis for the simplest form, to approximately 20 seconds for the more complicated form. Finally, once the users are satisfied with their analyses, they can choose to publish the results in the form of images or output to a printer.

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To help get you started, there's a video that accompanies this release:

• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1eEvnAas
• non-YouTube: http://labs.autodesk.com/files/1801_1900/1811/file_1811.mp4

Thanks Vidisha. So take the solar radiation add-in for a whirl and let us know what you think at labs.revit.ecotect@autodesk.com.

Looking forward to your feedback in regards to our sustainability efforts is alive in the lab.