Tuesday, September 2, 2008

SketchUp Virtual Environment


The green software industry moves forward yet again with the recent announcement of an IES plug-in for Google SketchUp. Similar to the Revit Architecture plug-in IES now offers their VE-Ware, their sustainability toolkit and a direct link into Virtual Environment, one of the most robust, engineering grade analysis programs in the industry.

At the basic level this means that with a free version of SketchUp and a free VE-Ware plug-in, anyone across the globe can design a building or a home and evaluate the energy performance while tracking carbon emissions against the 2030 challenge. For those like myself who are passionate about change, we warmly welcome the opening up of the competition to any clever person owning a computer.

At the professional level this opens up these free tools to those modeling accurately in any non-BIM tools which can be exported into SketchUp (Rhino, 3DS Max, etc.). In essence, any firm using Revit in conjunction with other design tools now has the ability to track carbon at every stage of every project…with a free plug-in.

Sketchup Model...

IES import

As a personal opinion, for those who have been following earlier blogs I can say that IES has taken the lead among energy modeling tools. http://greenbimnetwork.blogspot.com/2008/06/engineer-takes-lead.html “But perhaps more importantly this software will be able to reuse architectural design models, architectural construction models, and will promote interoperability by cleanly exchanging data between all design and analysis platforms.” While IES is not yet fully interoperable with all platforms, they have swung the door wide open.

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