Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) today launched a plug-in to Google SketchUp. This plug-in links directly to IES’s free VE-Ware tool which accurately determines the Yearly Energy Consumption and associated Carbon Dioxide Emissions for any building, in any part of the world.

How to determine a buildings Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions for free in 5 easy steps…

1. Model your building in Google SketchUp
2. Open VE-Ware and tell it where your building is in the world
3. Define your: Building Type, Construction materials, Heating and cooling system types, Room types
4. Press a button - automatic detailed hourly thermal simulation is performed for you
5. Get output on:  Energy Consumption, Regional CO2 emissions,US benchmark against the Architecture 2030 (Zero-Carbon) challenge

Read the news story on the IES website

Update: If you just want to use the free VE-Ware tool within SketchUp then the self contained installation package which includes a simple SketchUp plug-in is available at www.iesve.com/ve-ware. It is compatible with both the Free and Pro versions of Google SketchUp.

Watch this beautiful visualisation of an acoustic analysis inside a torus knot done in Ecotect.

Dr. Andrew J. Marsh, the principal author behind Ecotect comments on a future Mac OS X compilation of the software in the Autodesk Ecotect discussion forum:

Basically I’d love to do a Mac version of ECOTECT…  I’ll need to go entirely OpenGL in v6.0 of ECOTECT. This will break the link with GDI and make both the graphics engine and calculation functions pretty well OS independant…  unfortunately it won’t happen in the short term, however its definitely in our future plans so…

Read the post on the squ1.com forum

Autodesk Ecotect Solar Analysis data can be imported into ParaCloud Modeler and converted as solar numeric matrix. The matrix data can be used as a population matrix or as driving parameters values.

On the ParaCloud Community Blog you can find a tutorial that covers the following subjects:

• Importing surface from ParaCloud into Ecotect

• Exporting Ecotect solar calculation data as text file

• Using Excel indexing equation to match the ParaCloud format

• Rescaling solar matrix in ParaCloud as Cellular component matrix

The McKinsey for Vattenfall Report “A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction” investigates popular greenhouse gas reduction strategies and their related costs. Almost a quarter of possible emission reductions would result from measures that carry no net life cycle cost – in effect, they come free of charge. Most of those measures are related to building design (building insulation, lighting, air conditioning).

Emissions from buildings are responsible for 40% of all global emissions, on the other hand buildings offer huge possible efficiencies and low cost abatement strategies. This should inform us as building industry representatives as well as governments responsible for the rules of the game.

It is a myth that addressing greenhouse gas emissions will severely strain the global economy: The authors point out that the cost of emissions abatement would be 0.6%–1.4% of the global GDP, it can be compared with the amount spent globally on insurance, which is 3.3% of the global GDP.

Follow these links for further information:

Worldchanging: Buildings–the Biggest Bang for the Buck in Global CO2 Abatement

Lightbucket: The cost of carbon abatement

Dr. Ken Yeang is a prolific Malaysian architect and writer best known for developing environmental design solutions for high-rise buildings. As a principle of T.R. Hamzah & Yeang in Kuala Lumpur, he pioneered the passive low-energy design of skyscrapers, what he has called “bioclimatic” design. In 2005 Yeang became a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang, a multidisciplinary firm of urban designers, architects and landscape architects and is now based in London. (Source: Wikipedia)

Read the Ken Yeang interview on CNN.com and don’t miss to explore the gallery with illustrations of his visionary designs.

Learn about Composition and Cameras, Modeling, Lighting, Rendering and Post and find out how Neoscape produced their well known Loft 5 project (Video from YouTube).

Tutorials

The following tutorials give insight into techniqes using AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp 3ds Max and V-Ray.

See the tutorials at en.9jcg.com:

Exterior Scenes Part 1 - Composition & Cameras
Exterior Scenes Part 2 - Modeling (ACAD/Revit/SketchUp Into Max)
Exterior Scenes Part 3 – Lighting
Exterior Scenes Part 4 - Rendering and Post

Over the next 21 months, 3TIER plans to continue to map the world for wind and solar resources, country by country, based upon a priority order that takes into account such issues as renewable energy policies, availability of renewable energy resource and economic status.

Every quarter through 2010, 3TIER will release a series of resource maps for a particular region of the world.

Visit firstlook.3tiergroup.com or remappingtheworld.com for more information.

If Rhino, AutoCAD, Revit and 3ds Max are part of your work flow you will find some great video tutorials on this website: designreform.net

These direct links lead you to two of many excellent screencasts:

Learn how to link complex organic geometry that was modeled in Rhino into Revit as a mass element

This one shows us how to use Rhino’s implicit history tool for parametric design

Autodesk anounced the availability of Ecotect 5.60 for purchase online.  It almost doubled in price compared to previous versions.

Read the news at the Autodesk/Square One website