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342 | ChApter 9 ConCeptual Design anD Design analysis

5. Set Ground Plane to Level 1.
You’ll notice a lot of options in the Energy Settings dialog box—some of them quite
complex. To complete the rest of the dialog box, we’re going to step through each of the
sections. So far, we’ve completed the first set of parameters in the Common group.
6. Let’s walk through the settings in the Detailed Model group:
Export Category Your option here is either Rooms or Spaces. If you’re working from an
architectural model, chances are you’re using Rooms. If this were an MEP model or you
were linking in information from an MEP consultant, you’d want to use Spaces. For our
exercise, leave it set to Rooms.

Export Complexity There are five different levels of complexity that you can export
your building model to. The least complex is a Simple model, and the complexity grows
to include shading, surfaces, and mullions. To use the more complex features, you’ll need
to have that content available in the model, and it will take more time to render a result.
Leave the default setting of Simple With Shading Surfaces.

Include Thermal Properties This check box will include the thermal properties of
materials you have in your building design. In the Materials dialog box, you have the
ability to add thermal values (R and U values) to the materials used for modeled elements
such as walls, windows, and roofs. For this exercise, we are analyzing only conceptual
massing, so uncheck the box.

Project Phase This is the phase the analysis will be run against. Keep the default
setting of New Construction.

Sliver Space Tolerance This setting specifies the gap between spaces or rooms that is
acceptable for the analysis. Leave the default setting of 1’-0” (300 mm).

Building Envelope This setting is used only for analyzing building elements—not
conceptual massing. The options are to use the Function parameter of walls to determine
if it is set to Exterior or to identify the walls dynamically using ray-trace and flood-
mapping calculation methods.
Analytical Grid Cell Size Used with the Building Envelope setting, this dimension sets
the specificity of the calculation method to determine the exterior walls. The smaller the
value, the longer the calculation will take.

7. The next group of settings comprises the Energy Model parameters. These settings deal
with more complex energy model parameters and usually require some input from your
mechanical consultant. We’ll explain the parameters here, but for this section plan to
keep the default values of our exercise.
Core Offset This is the distance the building core is offset from the perimeter. If you
have an assumption for this distance in the early design phases of your project, you can
define it here.

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