let's help Kim Shinn

Is this for a house project? I haven't used this, but HEED might be the right choice here. Anyone feel free to contradict me… http://www.energy-design-tools.aud.ucla.edu/heed/ It's free. Mike Manzi RA, CSI, CDT, LEED BD+C Bora Architects 503 226 1575 F

Easy answers are usually not very reliable and typically have value proportional to the effort enlisted... I would use rules of thumb before some of the mentioned software. Equest is free and has a robust support community of practitioners. It does have a learning curve but there are lots of resources available for beginners and advanced users alike. Best of luck. Ed On Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 2:46 PM Anne Harney wrote:

I would suggest Ladybug Tools (http://www.ladybug.tools) (Ladybug/Honeybee)—a free, open-source plugin for Rhino/Grasshopper and (recently) Revit/Dynamo. It uses EnergyPlus, Daysim, Radiance, etc. There are a lot of excellent tutorials freely available from Chris Mackey and his colleagues/co-creators of the plugin: https://www.youtube.com/user/chrismackey88/videos There is also a very active forum of users for support on the Ladybug Tools site. (Note: This tool involves use of visual programming tools (Grasshopper/Dynamo) - which sounds very complicated, and can be, but speaking from my own experience, Ladybug/Honeybee are designed to be very user-friendly and intuitive. And the visual programming interface allows for easy customization of representation of analysis results which is very helpful for communicating information to the other members of a project team.) -James

This is funny, because this is the same question I asked Kim about a month ago, when he was speaking to my students. I don't think he's asking on MY behalf! Anne, I have just one question for you....MAYLINE?????

Yesterday a group of us responsible for re-writing the AIA’s Energy Modeling Design Guide were wondering what resources exist for helping architects select energy modeling software. Obviously the AIA can’t pick favorites. Someone suggested the AIA’s own Knowledge Community, Building Performance, as a potential source for sharing opinions without the AIA getting in trouble. While we were on the call, Kim tried to pretend to be a simple architect and offered up the question you see below to see if this would be a relevant location to reference in the Guide. Only time will tell… My two cents: Diva is great for daylighting and solar analysis. For LEED daylighting compliance we are now using Revit tools, experiencing some issues and burning lots of cloud credits. I still use COMFEN for fenestration and shading analysis. It’s limited to simple inputs, but that makes it hard to screw up an analysis in COMFEN. Climate Consultant and Ecotect for climate visualization, although we are putting together more climate analyses using Grasshopper tools these days. I’m both scared of and still interested in Sefaira. I haven’t played with it in a few years. The last time I played with it, the software told me that my code compliant building had a design EUI of 30, which I knew to be false. It’s hard for me to know what information to trust and not trust from it. That said, they keep improving it and to the extent that it improves architect literacy of modeling, it is a great tool. I think it’s far more dangerous to exclude architects from the energy design of buildings than begin to include us. In addition to the above, my main technique now is to find someone who knows early energy modeling and then let them use whatever software they need to answer the team’s design-related questions, with lots of interaction. There was a graphic that was shared as part of the SDL Winter Summit that shows what software we use…the top 10 in order from most used to less used (in case the graphic doesn’t show up). 1. Honeybee/Ladybug (Grasshopper) 2. Revit tools 3. Sefaira for Sketchup 4. Diva 5. eQuest 6. EnergyPlus 7. Climate Consultant 8. Sefaira for Revit 9. Butterfly for Rhino/Grasshopper 10. 3ds Max -Kjell ................................................................. Kjell Anderson AIA, LEED AP Associate Director of Sustainable Design LMN 801 Second Avenue, Suite 501 Seattle, WA 98104 T 206 682 3460 lmnarchitects.com<%20lmnarchitects.com%20> [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1Kz4984-ecY_3ceh26A1MtmJwpMmpKerkaO_3NujTqtDG7T7DeiQ_BbFwixt7hFoxXzXJbhve_Kcs1b0g7VUFpEWdDVJ_lS7zjTgNQ5pKjpzl8U2egVssC-eiYRsSz6fNVUn7pD0] From: Anne Harney [mail

Open Studio Ilana Judah, AIA, OAQ, LEED AP BD+C, CPHD Principal, Director of Sustainability FXCollaborative Architects LLP D +1 646 292 8116 | T +1 212 627 1700

Sefaira Architecture. Usually the free programs are more complicated and have a higher learning curve (ie: grasshopper/ladybug/diva require knowledge of grasshopper - although I agree they are more accurate).  We've been successful with training our designers to use Sefaira in sketchup during early design phase - it gives us just enough information, but not too much to be overwhelming.  Just the basics :) Sefaira does give out free trials. 

My experience with Sefaira is that it is better -- giving more accurate results -- if you get the combined Sefaira Architecture+Systems program, and get a mech engineer to create the hvac "defaults for your common building type. Otherwise I find there is too much leeway in the results when just relying on the 'architecture' side of the program.

Anne, I have an erasing shield and drafting brush I can lend you when I next see you. I think we may need to lobby BG to add a "like" feature to this site.

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