[kyle.bernhardt]

This seems like a great thread to chime in on. It's also quite helpful that earlier this week our press embargo lifted and I can actually talk about what's included in our upcoming release.

I will try and address many of the concerns and points you all have regarding this subject, but I can't deliver the be-all-end-all source for technical information on IES, Revit, and gbXML...at least in one post. I'll try and touch on as much as I can, feel free to ask any questions that you may have, I'll try and answer them.

First, to address Stephen...well put. Although I can tell you have a lot of emotion on the subject, this is an emotional subject, so I understand where you're coming from. There is an extremely important need for more sustainable design practices in building design. The end result of such practices, if carried to fruition, are buildings that have a drastically smaller environmental footprint. This is not something that is lost among us at Autodesk, we get it, and share your passion on the subject.

We at Autodesk have the unique opportunity to help drive the industry in that direction by providing design tools that facilitate such practices in a user friendly, productive, and accurate manner. A big part of "sustainable design" is knowing the impact of decisions you make, and being able to quantify their impacts. It is this analysis capability that is the real barrier to the market moving, IMO. It is in reducing barriers to practicing sustainable design & analysis that we play a role. We can create the tools for analysis, but it's what you do with that information that make a design "sustainable."

Stepping off of soapbox...

You as customers have the opportunity to help drive our product directions as well by voicing your opinion on what's important to you. That is our strongest driver in product direction, I say that without any hesitation. This is why I welcome such spirited dialogs. I long for the days when I could simply post what I wanted without knowing what it would take to deliver, ignorance was bliss. That's not meant to be a knock on any of you, that's exactly what you should be doing...let us figure out the details.

Now that you know where I come from on the subject, I'll go over what this Revit/IES integration is that you speak of...

Well, not yet....It's important to point out that there exists today a lot of capabilities for leveraging building information models in your analysis applications. In the non-structural world this is predominantly in the form of gbXML. This open file format is designed to be used to communicate building geometries as well as certain properties of that building. The gbXML file represents a building's geometry by breaking it down into spaces, each space consisting of surfaces that make up it's geometry's seperate surfaces, which in turn, contain openings like windows and doors. These spaces and surfaces contain attributes to be used in analysis. In Revit the geometry of the rooms in the building, and their bounding elements, are the source for the gbXML output. This is done for many reasons, but mainly because it matches up nicely with the gbXML schema.

The gbXML export from Revit works quite well today, when the building model is set up properly. Room volumes must be computed, rooms must be adjacent for walls to be set as interior, bounding elements must be set as boundable, rooms must extend up to the floor above or have another room to represent the plenum space...Like many other design tasks involved in complex buildings, it's a bit of a science and learning is required. I This is a subject that I could go into even more length on, but I'm already way beyond the my intended scope. The point is, Revit works a certain way when it generates an analysis model, and if you don't understand how it works, it's not gonna work for you. **** in....**** out, as one of my college professors loved to say.

This gbXML capability significantly reduces the time it takes to carry out various analysis tasks because the building geometry does not need to be re-created. This alone is cool functionality.

But, I did say something about IES didn't I? Well, now I'll get to the meat and potatoes. IES has software called the Virtual Environment, or the <VE>. This is an incredibly robust software package capable of carrying out many different types of building analyses. We've chosen to partner with them to further develop the analysis capabilities of Revit. This manifests itself in a couple ways.

First, we've developed a direct link between the upcoming release of Revit MEP (formerly Revit Systems) and the <VE>. This allows for a more robust transfer of building data directly into the <VE> for analysis. There is no importing or exporting. Things like shading surfaces, window and door locations, room occupancies, internal loads, wall constructions, and room types are also transferred along the way. It is important to note that some of this information is also added to a gbXML file generated from Revit.

Second, we’ve utilized one of the <VE>’s analysis modules directly within Revit MEP for native Heating and Cooling load analysis. This is possible because the vast majority of the inputs to the analysis already exists on the rooms within the Revit model, although they are only visible within Revit MEP. This capability allows for quick evaluation of changes on the Heating and Cooling energy requirements for a building.

There’s also additional stuff in the works, but I can’t talk about it at this point. It is important to know that at this point the only <VE> capability native to Revit is the Heating and Cooling load analysis capability. Broad statements that the <VE> is inside Revit aren’t true, sounds cool though huh?

Well, I had hoped to cover more than this, but time, and my sanity, dictates that I should stop here for now. I hope this provides some insight for you on the topic. I can’t guarantee I can answer your questions about everything, and I certainly can’t talk about future directions, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.


Cheers,

Kyle B