Building Systems Tools & Resources
- Andrew Molloy
- Nina Wilson
This page is available to all students in the SU School of Architecture who wish to access software tutorials, web tools, troubleshooting resources, example files, and other materials that may aid the completion of coursework for Building Systems and other courses.
If you have any questions or would like to share your own knowledge or work with other students, please contact Nina Wilson at nwilson1@syr.edu.
Climate Studio
Advanced daylighting, electric lighting, and conceptual thermal analysis.
Download page: How to install ClimateStudio (Windows only)
Tutorials (updated F2023): https://www.solemma.com/learn
Electrical Lighting Resource (.ies files for lamps and luminaires): https://ieslibrary.com/browse
EnergyPlus Meteorological Data
https://energyplus.net/weather
Sefaira Design Performance Testing with SketchUp
30-day trial: The Sefaira education team provided this link for education customers to start a Sefaira trial. It is a 30-day trial to Sketchup Studio, which includes Sefaira.
Purchases can be made here:
Student license (optional – it is $55 per year): https://www.creationengine.com/sketchupstudent
Tutorials:
EPIC Early Design Stage Carbon Assessment Tool
ATHENA Impact Estimator for Buildings
In North America, the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings is the only free software tool that is designed to evaluate whole buildings and assemblies based on internationally recognized life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Using the Impact Estimator, architects, engineers and others can easily assess and compare the environmental implications of industrial, institutional, commercial and residential designs — both for new buildings and major renovations.
https://calculatelca.com/resources/watch-tutorials/impact-estimator-for-buildings-tutorials/
Tally
Developed by Kieran Timberlake, Tally is a Revit-integrated life cycle assessment tool to understand embodied environmental impacts of architecture. We DO have an educational license for this:
https://su-jsm.atlassian.net/wiki/x/YwvqC
Grasshopper Main Site
The Grasshopper main site is a good source for free examples of script definitions, demonstrations and various tips/tutorials. It is recommended to stop here after you have familiarized yourselves with the GH Primer.
https://www.grasshopper3d.com/
Grasshopper Primer 3rd Ed.
https://github.com/modelab/grasshopper-primer/blob/master/_downloads/GrasshopperPrimer_V3-3_EN.pdf
Ladybug Tools
Ladybug, a plugin for Grasshopper, is a useful tool for producing visualizations for environmental analysis.
https://www.ladybug.tools/ladybug.html
Honeybee
Honeybee is in the family of energy and environmental analysis plugins for Grasshopper for Rhino. Honeybee supports detailed daylighting and thermodynamic modeling that tends to be most relevant during mid and later stages of design. Specifically, it creates, runs and visualizes the results of daylight and radiation simulations using Radiance and energy models using EnergyPlus/OpenStudio. It accomplishes this by linking the Grasshopper/Rhino CAD environment to these engines.
https://www.ladybug.tools/honeybee.html
EnergyPlus
EnergyPlus™ is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model both energy consumption—for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and plug and process loads—and water use in buildings.
Energy Fundamentals
Video tutorial series on energy modeling using Grasshopper for Rhino:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtSMbRCHXHVGeqcgxxE7U_GY3eUnc2Lpp
Parametric Architecture
LunchBox is a plug-in for Grasshopper for exploring mathematical shapes, paneling, structures, and workflow. We have also introduced new components for general machine learning implementations such as regression analysis, clustering, and networks.
https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/lunchbox
Multi-Criteria Optimization
Several plugins for Grasshopper for Rhino that enable evolutionary algorithms, multi-criteria optimization, and visualization techniques for MCO:
- Octopus: https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/octopus Octopus was originally made for Multi-Objective Evolutionary Optimization. It allows the search for many goals at once, producing a range of optimized trade-off solutions between the extremes of each goal. It is used and works similar to David Rutten's Galapagos, but introduces the Pareto-Principle for Multiple Goals.
See also: - Goat: https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/goat
- Nelder-Mead: https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/nelder-mead-optimisation-eoc
- Embryo: https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/embryo
Hydra
Hydra is a searchable repository of files shared by others and hosted by github. These should be free files to download and modify to fit your own projects. Be aware that the open source files vary quite a bit in quality, but there are certainly some good examples to be found.
https://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/?keywords=views
Ekotrope
A useful R-value calculator that can be used to quickly estimate the thermal performance of an assembly.
https://www.ekotrope.com/r-value-calculator
ClimateScout
CLIMATE SCOUT helps its users design buildings that uniquely respond to a site by providing climate-specific design advice at the building scale. It pairs the Köppen-Geiger climate classification and building design strategies from Architecture 2030’s Palette.
https://www.callisonrtkl.com/climate-scout-intro/
Zero Tool
The Zero Tool – an Architecture 2030 project – was developed for building sector professionals to establish energy reduction baselines and targets, compare a building’s energy performance with similar buildings and to codes, and understand how a building achieved its current energy performance.
https://zerotool.org/zerotool/