Natural Light in Design: IAP 2009

ECOTECT TUTORIAL
--Si
--Siân
Siân Kleindienst--
Kleindienst--
1 – Getting Started

1.1 -- Entering the License

The first time you start Ecotect, it will present you with this screen:

You should begin by clicking on activate license… in the bottom left

corner.

On the next screen, click Activate via the internet on this computer
and click next.
next

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The following screen should ask for the product number, email
address, and password. Copy and paste them into the correct
fields from the email that was sent to you, and click next.
next

The final screen shows details of the license you just entered. The
licenses that we have are desktop, not network, licenses, so make
sure that button is clicked before clicking next.
next This should
complete the software activation.

1.2 – The Project Page

On the upper-most tab on the left side of your screen, you may enter any project information and notes for your own records.
(See next page.) You can also set the longitude, latitude, and time zone on this page if you wish, but we will do that later in the
tutorial. One other very useful function located on this page is the north offset function. If the walls of your building do not face
due north, south, east, and west – or if you’d like to try out different building orientations – it’s often easier to change the north
angle than to change the angle of the walls.

The altitude and local terrain fields are not used in the lighting analysis portion of Ecotect.

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1.3 – User Preferences

On the top toolbar, there is a little black box through which you can change the user preferences. On these tabs are included
the filepaths of all important and install files, various user defaults, curser “snap”, object linking, and background color options.
The two most important tabs are these:

On the Localization tab, you set the units in which the model will be built. The Ecotect default is millimeters.

On the Modeling tab, the most important thing is to set the Default Zone Height to whatever ceiling height you will want. You
will have to change this default every time you want to make a space or group of spaces with a new ceiling height.

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2 – Basic CAD

2.1 -- Making a Room

On the side toolbar is the icon for creating a zone,

zone
which you make by tracing its footprint on the ground
plane. (Click on the ground to place each corner, and
press ESC to close the figure.) The height of the zone
is determined by the Default Zone Height mentioned
in Section 1.3. Unlike points, lines, and planes, a zone
is created with every normal facing outwards by
default, and appropriate materials are applied to the
walls, ceiling, and floor respectively.

When you press ESC to close your zone, a box will pop
up asking what you want to name your zone.
Everything you model after this will be placed in this
zone until you model a new zone or create one in the
zone manager tab to the right of the screen.

The tab with

this icon –

-- is for zone
management,
and in this tab
you can select
or move objects
on a zone, hide
zones, etc.

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After having made the basic form of my model, I prefer to center the ground-plane grid around my model. You can do this by
clicking on View in the top menu, then clicking on Fit Grid to Model in the drop-down menu. This just makes it easier to orbit
and zoom in on your model.

We will now add some windows to our model. First, it is very important to select the face that the window will be on. Not only
does this assist you in drawing straight lines, but it links the window to that face. Otherwise, you will have a piece of glass
floating in front of a wall, not a hole in the wall filled by glass. When your wall is selected, click the window icon on the left side
tool bar. It may ask you to chose between several options… just pick the one that looks like a window. (The others are panel,
void, and door.)

Draw the window on the face, using ESC to close the shape. If you want your windows to be exact copies of each other, you can
press Ctrl + C to copy when the window is highlighted, then Ctrl + V to paste (it pastes to the same spot as the first window),
and use the move icon (just under the pointer on the left side tool bar) to grab a corner and drag.

2.2 – Materials

The right side tab with this icon: is the materials library. With this tab open, click on any surface, and the assigned
material will be highlighted. Right-click on any material, click Select Primary
Primary Material,
Material and every object with this material will be
slected. Right-click again on any material, click Material Properties… and a window will open up that allows you to see and
define the properties of that material.

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The most important properties to lighting analysis are highlighted in pink below: color, reflectivity, and transmittance. Right-
click on the swatches next to the words Colour (Reflect): to change the color, and left click to change the overall reflectivity.

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You can also change the name of the existing

material (no spaces!) and click Add New Element to
add the new material to the library (the other
material will still exist also). This will be useful to us
later.

Notice also that if you describe a material that has

an unrealistic reflectance, such as the one on the
bottom left, Ecotect will warn you, and you can
manually change it to something more reasonable.

Keep in mind that when you add a new material to

the library, you still need to apply it to the objects in
your model. Some ballpark reflectance ranges to
keep in mind are 50% – 83% for walls and ceilings,
and 10%-50% for
floors. White paint
has a reflectance of
83%.

Glass transmittance
is around 92% by
default in Ecotect.
This is very high, so
you may want to
reduce it manually.

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2.3 – Visualizing and Setting Cameras

At any time in the previous process, we could

have looked our model in the Visualise tab,
which shows a filled-in rather than a
wireframe model. In this tab, we will notice if
our geometry has gone wrong, if we’ve
assigned materials in the wrong places, or if
the windows did not become attached to the
walls.

The eye icon on the right side is the

Visualisation Settings tab. Here you can
assign cutting planes, cull the front-faces, so
that you can see inside, and more
importantly, you can set camera views. To
set a camera view, rotate the model to the
view position you desire, scroll down the

Visualisation Settings menu until you find Camera Views and click the
button marked New… That particular view will now be saved in a tab at
the bottom of the screen, and that view will be exported for rendering.

You will notice when you go back to the wireframe model that your
camera views have formed a new zone called OpenGL Views and are
graphically represented by a camera point, a view vector, and a view
aperture and plane. If you had a hard time getting the correct spot for
your camera in the visualize mode, you can physically move the
camera point in the wireframe model.

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3 – Sun Path and Climate Data

3.1 – Setting a Weather File

Before we can do any analysis, we

must locate our model on the
earth. In the top toolbar, next to a
group of time and date dropdown
menus, is an earth icon. Click on
this icon and choose Load
Weather File… from the menu.
This will open up the Weather
Data folder in the Ecotect install
files and allows you to choose
from any of the .wea files that
come with Ecotect. If the city you
desire is not in this folder, choose Find Weather Data… from the earth icon menu and get the data either from Ecotect’s own
website (Square One, Inc) or from the Energy Plus Weather Data website.

If you need to use the Energy Plus site, download the .epw file for the correct city and save it to the Weather Data folder in the
Ecotect install files. In Ecotect’s top toolbar, click on Tools then Convert Weather Data… Ecotect’s Weather Tool will open
automatically. Go to File and Open… in the Weather Tool menu and open the file you just downloaded. An import screen will
pop up. Press the button that says Import… and the data will be loaded into the Weather Tool. Save the loaded data as a .wea
file in the same folder, and you will then be able to load it into Ecotect as described above.

3.2 – Visualizing the Sun Path and Shadows

The ability to visualize the sun path in 3-D is one of the most powerful and useful of Ecotect’s abilities. The sun icon on the
right side indicates the Shadow Settings menu. If you open that menu and click the Display Shadows button, a shadow cast by
the model (appropriate to the time and date currently listed next to the earth icon) will be displayed on the ground plane. If
appropriate, you will also see spots of direct sun penetration through windows in the model.

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The ground plane is the default place where shadows will be cast, but you can change that by selecting alternate objects on
which shadows (and sun spots) will be cast. One intuitive way to do this is to select the floor and all the walls of the model to
“tag as shaded” (see picture above). This will allow you to see how shadows and sun spots are cast inside the model.

The above instructions help visualize shadows and how they move in a space, but Ecotect helps you visualize the sun’s path as
well. Above the Display Shadows button are Daily Sun Path and Annual Sun Path options. This first will produce a 3-D yellow
curve representing the sun’s path on the day specified in the top toolbar (with the sun positioned at the specified time), and the
second will add a network of blue lines that represent the sun path of the first day of each month. The hourglass figures

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spaced along the sun path represent each hour. The
path of the hour over the year forms this shape due to
the sinusoidal variance (of a few minutes only) between
solar time and clock time due nature of earth’s rotation
and elliptical solar orbit.

At the bottom of the Shadow Settings menu, there are

two Animate Shadows options; the Hourly animation
shows the sun (and the resulting shadows) changing from
sunrise to sunset on the specified day. The Annual
animation shows the sun and shadows changing from
January through December at the same specified time of
day.

These sun path and shadows options give a good visual

understanding of geometric sun penetration within the
model for the specified climate.

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4 – Numerical Analysis

4.1 – Setting the Analysis Grid

Next we will create a work-plane grid for numerical analysis. The Analysis Grid menu on the right is indicated by the icon .
Click Display Analysis Grid to bring up the default grid, and to fit the grid within the model, highlight the floor plane and click
Auto-
Auto-Fit Grid to Objects.
Objects A menu will pop up offering options for the type of fit. To keep the grid within the floorplan of the
model, choose the option Within and press OK. OK You can adjust the height of the work-plane grid by adjusting the Offset (and
change the grid orientation from horizontal to vertical by adjusting the Axis)
Axis under the subheading 2D Slice Position.
Position You can
also manually adjust the grid cell size and extents by pressing the button Grid Management…

4.2 – Exporting to Radiance

If you have not done so, you should save your model now. Although Ecotect has quite a few internal calculation tools, we will
skip over them and export directly to Radiance. The reason for this is that Radiance has been proven one of the most
numerically accurate rendering tools in existence, while Ecotect uses quick but much less reliable hand calculations.

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One unfortunate thing about the Radiance export
function is that it does not always export materials
reliably – especially glass and other transparent
materials. However, the software allows you to
make your own Radiance materials.

For example, to make a Radiance definition for a

glass material with 80% transmittance, we must
first make a new window material in Ecotect (see
section 2.2. This new material is called
window_80 and assigned to the model’s windows.

The next step is to open Notepad, or some other

text editor, and write these lines:

void glass window_80

0
0
3 0.84 0.84 0.84 (
Note that the Radiance glass definition requires a slightly higher number than the transmittance.)

The file must then be named “window_80.rad” – it is important to save it as type “All files”, so that “.txt” does not get appended
to the name. Your new material file needs to then be placed in the Materials folder in the Ecotect install files. On most
computers, this will be the folder C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Ecotect\Materials\. Finally, on the last page of the export
wizard (see page 19), you must make sure that Check for Material.rad files… is checked, or Ecotect will not look for them.
When exporting, Ecotect will then replace any materials with a corresponding Radiance material file.

Radiance material definitions can be found at http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/refer/ray.html#Materials. Here is an example

of a wall material stored as file PaleYellowWalls.rad:

void plastic PaleYellowWalls

0
0
5 .804 .796 .353 0 0

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The export menu, indicated by this icon , has buttons for each program that it’s possible to export to, although they must
be separately installed on your computer beforehand. (Therefore Radiance should already be installed on your computer,
preferably in the folder C:\Radiance\.) Click the button RADIANCE/DAYSIM and then click Export Model Data… The first thing
it will ask you to do is to save the model as a .rad file (this is different from saving it as an Ecotect model). You should create a
separate folder for this model (there will be several supporting files) in a path with no spaces in it’s name. For example,
C:\Ecotect\model1\model.rad works, but C:\My Documents\Ecotect\model 1\model.rad may not work due to the spaces
in “My Documents” and “model 1”. When your model is saved, a wizard will guide you through the steps of exporting to
Radiance. Here is an example export:

Here, we’ve chosen to calculate illuminances, in units of lux. Illuminance is

the most common metric for architectural lighting codes.

Choosing Surface and/or Point Analysis means that numerical

illuminances will be calculated as well as pictures rendered.

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Choose Analysis Grid so that illuminance will be calculated at points in the grid
we just set up.

Here we have a choice of sky conditions, and we’ve chosen Sunny.

Sunny

If we pick Use Current Date and Time,

Time we will be doing the rendering and
calculation for the date and time currently in the top toolbar next to the earth
icon.

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We will probably want to see Interior Views of our model, if we have set up the
appropriate cameras.

The cameras that you set up will appear in the lower box… select only the
ones you wish to render.

This accuracy affect the suggested Radiance parameters. Obviously a model

rendered at high accuracy takes longer. There’s no real reason to not use
the medium setting.

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If this is the first time you’ve exported to Radiance, you will see an error on
this page. What you need to do is locate a file called rad.exe for Ecotect. If
you’ve installed Radiance on the C: drive, rad.exe should be located in
C:\Radiance\bin\rad.exe. You should browse and locate this file by clicking
the button that says Fix.
Fix

Once Ecotect knows where Radiance is, you need to check the path name for
the Radiance output. There should be NO SPACES IN THIS PATH.

These are the Radiance parameters being used for the calculation and
rendering. If you wish to know more about what they mean, there is a link on
the left side of the wizard screen to the appropriate Radiance manual page.

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The final page of the export wizard is largely a summary of what

the wizard just guided you through. In fact, if you like, you can
always skip to this last page to define the export. Make sure the
settings are the same as the ones in this picture and click OK.
OK The
wizard will disappear and a black command screen will open up
while Radiance is running.

When Radiance is finished, the renderings will pop up first inside a viewer. You may need to change the size of the window. By
running the mouse over the pictures that appear, you can see the illuminance at each pixel (in the bottom right hand corner of
viewer). You can also record the illuminance on the picture itself by clicking on different pixels. Different overlays, such as false
color (below center) and human sensitivity (below right) are available. Human sensitivity is a setting that tries to take into
account the high range of brightness that humans can see at once.

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The other output of Radiance is the illuminance data on the work-plane. When you close or
minimize the Radiance viewer, you should notice that a little window has popped up on your
Ecotect screen detailing the data and what it will replace. Click Import.
mport You may need to
hide and redisplay the analysis grid, but the Radiance Data should cause the grid to change
color. If you do not have a color scale locked in place at this point, it will create its own scale.
For readability and for comparison purposes, you will want to create and lock your own scale.
Just change the maximum, minimum, and contour range under the subheading Data &
Scale in the Analysis Grid menu, and then click on the small picture of the lock. The analysis
grid will stay visible and complete in the visualize mode also.

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4.3 – Exporting to Daysim

An export to Daysim is the same process as exporting to

Radiance (section 4.2) up until the last screen of the
wizard. On this page, Output Options must now read
DAYSIM Header,
Header and Auto-
Auto-run DAYSIM should be checked.
Everything else can remain the same.

This time, the Daysim java application should open up and

fill out the first three pages automatically, ending on the left-
hand page below. Click on Simulation to reveal the page on
the right. These are the Radiance parameters used in
simulation, and the defaults are low-accuracy. You can
either repeat the parameters used in Radiance by Ecotect
(section 4.2), use the ones entered below, which are
reasonable for simple models, or research the meaning of
the parameters (http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/man_html/rtrace.1.html).

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After entering your parameters, click Run Simulation…,
Simulation… make
sure you are calculating both daylight coefficients and
illuminance profiles,
profiles and check Run a simulation with the
Daysim GUI (do not make a batch file for later). Several black
command line screens should pop up one after the other in the
course of the calculation, which may take a little while.

When Daysim is finished calculating, it will take you back to the

Simulation
Simulation page. Go next to the Analysis page to define
occupancy hours
hours and the minimum illuminance threshold.
threshold
When you click on Start Daylighting Analysis,
Analysis Daysim will look at
the illuminance results for your model in 60 minute increments
over the year during occupied hours. (You can make it 5
minute increments by replacing the weather file on the Site Site
page and re-doing the simulation.) Daysim will then count up
the number of hours out of the annual total had an illuminance
greater than the minimum threshold. This percentage of hours
out of the total is known as Daylight Autonomy. When Daysim is finished calculating Daylight Autonomy, it will open up an html
script report in your web browser with the tabulated data and other information.

To import the Daylight Autonomy data onto the work-plane grid in your
model, click on the Grid Management button in the Analysis Grid menu.
On the window that pops up, click on the Manage Grid Data tab (see
right). At the bottom of the window, click on the Import Data…
Data… button
and browse to the folder in which you saved your files before export.
Daysim will have generated a group of folders – open the one named
res.
res Change the window to look at files of type DAYSIM Daylight
Autonomy (*.DA),
(*.DA) and open the file with extension
“.daylight_autonomy.DA”. You may have to hid and re-display the analysis
grid, but the daylight autonomy data should now be on the grid. You will
probably have to unlock and redefine the scale to go from 0 to 100,
since Daylight Autonomy is in units of %.

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5 – Closing Comments

This tutorial skipped over many details, but should provide enough information to go from installation to analysis with a simple
model. Ecotect includes many other functionalities than are listed here, and I encourage you to spend some time playing with its
capabilities, or reading the Ecotect features pages at http://ecotect.com/products/ecotect/features.

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