Greenheck Website Features Interactive LEED Worksheet

Greenheck features a new LEED interactive worksheet on its website, http://www.greenheck.com/  to help specifiers determine which Greenheck products will help with the attainment of points in the USGBC LEED Rating Program.

There are hundreds of Greenheck products that are organized and detailed pertaining to various credit qualifications in the Energy & Atmosphere, Materials & Resources, and Indoor Environmental Quality LEED categories. Convenient links are included to product specs, images, and 3D Revit models and manufacturing locations are listed.
For more information, visit http://www.greenheck.com/ and click on Green/LEED.

Autodesk® Green Building Studio® web-based energy analysis software

Autodesk® Green Building Studio® web-based energy analysis software can help architects and designers perform whole building analysis, optimize energy efficiency, and work toward carbon neutrality earlier in the design process. With faster, more accurate energy analysis of building design proposals, architects and designers can work with sustainability in mind earlier in the process, plan proactively, and build better.

• Whole building energy analysis software—Determine virtual building’s total energy use and carbon footprint
• Design alternatives analysis—Consider alternatives to improve energy efficiency
• Detailed weather analysis—Extensive weather data available for project site
• Carbon emission reporting—Emissions reporting for nearly all aspects of the building
• Daylighting—Qualification for LEED® daylighting credit
• Water usage and costs—Estimated water use, in and outside building
• ENERGY STAR® scoring—Scores provided for each design
• Natural ventilation potential—Summarizes mechanical cooling required and estimates hours design could use outdoor air to cool the building naturally

Autodesk Ecotect Analysis includes innovative building energy and carbon analysis tools made available through the Green Building Studio web-based service. The web service provides a user-friendly front end to powerful building energy analysis software. All of the computationally intensive hourly simulations are carried out on remote servers, and the results are provided to you in a web browser. The web-based service will collect data from three sources:

1. Your Revit® software model. All the building geometry comes from your model, including the number of rooms, the connections between rooms, and their relationship to the exterior, exposure, and aspect to the sun; and the shape and total area of built surfaces or openings.
2. Your responses to a few basic questions. In order to explain the building’s use or context, you will need to select a building type from a drop-down menu and enter the project location. You will also have a chance to select a weather station for the project, although the closest one is selected to be the default.
3. Regionalized databases. Based on the above information, the Green Building Studio web service will extract additional information about local weather conditions, construction, and materials. The service will automatically add any information you have not provided, so it can adapt to your requirements as your design evolves.

 Autodesk® Ecotect™ Analysis 2010 software is a comprehensive concept-to-detail sustainable design analysis tool, providing a wide range of simulation and analysis functionality through desktop and web-service2platforms. Powerful web-based whole-building energy, water, and carbon analysis capabilities converge with desktop tools for visualizing and simulating performance of the building model within the context of its environment. Use the desktop tools and web-service functionality together to help create more sustainable designs. This document describes how to access your Green Building Studio web-service account and manage projects, and provides tips to help you get started.

Autodesk Ecotect Analysis Program

Autodesk Ecotect can measure how fundamental criteria, such as solar, thermal, shading, lighting, and airflow, will affect building performance in the conceptual and detailed phases of design. This capability to forecast building performance over time better equips architects and engineers to deliver more energy efficient and sustainable building designs.

Autodesk Ecotect is a separate program and is not integrated into AutoCAD or Revit. It does the calculations using the gbxml analysis data that is exported from the BIM model. So you need to setup your model with rooms if you're using Revit Architecture, and with spaces if you're using Revit MEP.


Below is a white paper on how to prepare your BIM model for the export to the gbxml file.

Building Performance Analysis Using Revit Whitepaper

Using Green Building Studio with Revit

Click to link below
Using Green Build With Revit Whitepaper by Autodesk


This document helps you get started with Autodesk® Green
Building Studio® web service and presents the fundamental
concepts of the product, including:

• Defining Autodesk Green Building Studio
• Why you should use Green Building Studio
• Common pitfalls, and making the most of Green Building Studio energy analysis
• How Green Building Studio works
• Registration and installation
• How to perform some common tasks in the product
• Energy results and what they mean

Autodesk Green Building Studio analysis tools now available

The Autodesk Green Building Studio analysis tools, now available at http://www.autodesk.com/greenbuildingstudio, provide improved design insight through whole building energy, water and carbon-emission analysis, helping architects and designers to maximize building economic and environmental performance. The tools are compatible with Autodesk design software as well as software from other industry providers through the Green Building XML (gbXML) schema and can now be directly accessed from within the Revit platform for BIM with a new plug-in now available for download. Green Building Studio Inc. launched the Green Building Studio web service in 2004.

The Autodesk® Green Building Studio® web-based energy analysis service can help architects and designers perform whole building analysis, optimize energy efficiency, and work toward carbon neutrality earlier in the design process. With faster, more accurate energy analysis of building design proposals, architects and designers can work with sustainably in mind earlier in the process, plan proactively, and build better.

With the Autodesk® Green Building Studio® web-based energy analysis service, architects and designers can evaluate building components for impact on energy consumption as well as improve economic and environmental performance early in the design process.

Compatible with Revit MEP

The Autodesk Green Building Studio service is an analysis tool that interoperates with Revit® MEP and other compatible energy-analysis software and facilitates team collaboration and information sharing at all stages of design.

Evaluate Energy Profiles of Building Designs

Green Building Studio tools enable architects and designers to evaluate the energy profiles and carbon footprints of various building designs. Files are shared between engineering software programs and among engineers and architects early in the design cycle, making sustainable design more efficient and cost effective.

With Autodesk Green Building Studio tools, you can

• Capture early sustainable design analysis to support the process of reducing or eliminating negative environmental impacts.
• Communicate among the extended building design team using Autodesk design applications and other compatible energy and green analysis software.
• Gain a competitive advantage with increased client satisfaction and improved environmental performance.

Autodesk Green Build Studios Q&A (pdf - 52Kb)

Autodesk’s acquisition of Green Building Studio’s assets was completed on May 1, 2008.

They've completed the migration of the web service to Autodesk’s hardware. New users and existing Green Building Studio customers can now access the web service in the following manner.

• Current ‘pay-as-you-go’ customers can take advantage of a limited free trial period scheduled to conclude on or about June 30, 2008. Log into your existing account, accept the new Terms of Use agreement, and start realizing carbon neutral design with free analysis on up to two building projects per account.
• New customers can take advantage of a free 30-day trial period. Create a new user account, accept the Terms of Use agreement, and start realizing carbon neutral design with free analysis on up to two building projects per account.
• Returning annual subscription corporate customers can continue to use the Autodesk Green Building Studio web service as usual for the remaining term of your original subscription purchase. Just login to your existing account and accept the new Terms of Use agreement.
• To purchase single user annual subscriptions ($745) and 10-user corporate annual subscriptions ($4,995), login to the Autodesk Green Building Studio web service, accept the new Terms of Use agreement, and select the Upgrade link on the Project List page. Please note, PayPal TM payment services are no longer available. A note to Graphisoft users, the ArchiCAD add-on is temporarily unavailable while we are making updates to our new servers. We do expect availability soon and apologize for the inconvenience.

Users of Autodesk’s Revit®-based software applications who register for the Autodesk Green Building Studio service can now access the service directly with a plug-in available from our Downloads page after login.

If you have questions about a new or existing account, please contact their technical support staff directly via email. Technical support can be reached at support@greenbuildingstudio.com.