INTERACTIVE VISUALISATION OF HEAT LOSS AND GAIN FOR EARLY-STAGE ENERGY APPRAISAL OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) within the scope of commercial operations of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is becoming more important as the deadline for the 2016 UK government guidelines for collaborative information sharing approaches. Until recently, open source and more affordable BIM software tools were almost non-existent. Instead potential users of BIM tools invested time and money in expensive and complex BIM software solutions. Energy appraisal modelling and visualisation is now becoming possible to implement using BIM methodology. However, even top end BIM software tools do not necessarily meet the requirements of SMEs as they are either too complex, too expensive or lack the necessary features for energy appraisal and visualisation. A custom 3D software tool was developed for an SME specialising in low carbon housing, with the aim of influencing early design choices maximising energy efficiency. The software tool is designed to be a quick calculation tool that uses BIM principals for visualisation and limited data exchange. The software tool, based on computation models from the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), appropriate for early energy appraisal, is able to compute both numerically and visually the estimated energy usage and solar gain for early stage building designs (corresponding to the Level of Detail (LOD) 100 BIM maturity levels specification). We will describe the design and development process of the software tool, software validation and testing results. We conclude that the software tool can offer a beneficial alternative or used in addition with more complex and expensive 3D BIM tools and features a less steep learning curve.