Phase One:
Currently the building performance analysis tools available on the Revit platform analyze the whole building. In order to do this the facade geometry is simplified and results are computed on an annualized basis.
The tool created in the course of this research project analyzes the impact of solar radiation on a building 'cell', one column bay x one floor height x depth to core. The sampling of the solar radiation takes place on a plane on the outer skin of the building at user defined grid intervals and is detailed enough to evaluate radiation passing through perforated shading devices in front of the facade.
The tool consists of two components. A geometry generation component for creating facade systems, consisting of a weather tight envelope and dynamically responsive panels out board of that skin. This component enables a designer to develop numerous alternatives without any coding visual programming or scripting, thus reducing the skills necessary to do this kind of work and making it available to a much larger group of professionals.
The second component performs analysis on any to the designs produced using the first. It subjects the design to a series of analytical runs over a given time period utilizing the weather conditions expected at the buildings location at that time based on historical weather data. Due to the parametric behavior built into the panels in component one, a designer can study how best to configure those panels to optimize solar gain by either minimizing or maximizing it.
The result of the analysis is expressed in units of solar incidence. High or low values of solar incidence can be positive or negative depending on location time of year instantaneous weather conditions etc. This is not the best situation as it still leaves it up to the designer and others to translate this information into internal thermal comfort behind the skin.
Phase two:
Current thinking is to take the output from phase one and use it as an input into the US department of energy's energy plus open source software that can predict thermal comfort in the building based on numerous inputs. We will make a select few of these inputs user configurable along with the output from phase one, but most will be locked as sensible defaults, as the aim of all our efforts to date have been the identification of the optimal facade configuration, but not the determination of its precise performance on what are often complex whole building designs. This is the value of continuing the idea of the building cell approach in this phase.