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IES Virtual Environment 5.9 (Cadalyst Labs Review)
1 Nov, 2008 By: Jerry LaiserinSoftware conducts comprehensive performance analysis for all levels and phases of building design.
Back in the good old days, when energy costs hovered around $30 per barrel of petroleum, I was a panelist in a round-table discussion about the future of model-based building design software. A question arose concerning cultural and organizational changes that would be necessary for model-based building design processes to become more widely adopted. Expected answers among the panelists concerned issues such as reallocation of risks and rewards among AEC project participants, shifts in legal frameworks for design and construction contracts and dispute resolution, and more collaborative and better integrated project delivery methods. My response, offered only half in jest, was "$60-a-barrel oil."
As I'd intended, my remark evoked general laughter among attendees — initially at the sheer absurdity and implausibility of oil costs ever soaring that high. But the laughter also contained a nervous undercurrent of recognition that any significant shift in the economics of energy or construction surely would render untenable and nonviable the traditional way of doing AEC business — what I call legacy design and construction (LDC), as opposed to model-based virtual design and construction (VDC).
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At this writing, oil costs have soared to previously inconceivable levels far more than my $60-per-barrel witticism, and I often encounter folks who recall my remarks and blame me for predicting this catastrophic rise in energy costs. In reality, my goal then, as now, was to point out that market sensitivity to energy costs would inevitably drive demand for energy-conscious building design methods, which in turn require the model-based design and analysis techniques collectively known as VDC or building information modeling (BIM).
 IES Virtual Environment 5.9 Building Performance Analysis Software |
Solving the Problem
Nearly a decade before the widespread industry conversation about BIM and VDC, and even before the founding of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI, the world's principal advocate for and promoter of model-based design), a company called Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) came on the scene. IES was founded in 1994 in Scotland "with the initial purpose of developing what were then primarily academic tools for building performance design and analysis and bringing them into mainstream use," according to founder and managing director, Don McLean. The company launched commercially viable software that has grown to encompass design and analysis for all building design disciplines and to span a range of price/performance levels from the free and easy to the most detailed and rigorous.
IES' banner brand for its wide array of offerings is Virtual Environment (VE), an apt moniker for a suite of software that virtualizes the entire process of designing buildings with and for environmental considerations. Each VE flavor is tailored to specific AEC-related needs and capabilities.
 Figure 1. The VE/Solar module performs suncasting studies and animations for any date and latitude. |
This core product is what the company characterizes as the full Virtual Environment, which easily qualifies as the most comprehensive, most rigorous, and best integrated suite of tools for building energy design and analysis on the market today. It is intended for building designers who wish to design and analyze in the finest level of detail, with the greatest control over all parameters, and with the most flexible options for comparing and presenting data and results. This full IES/VE includes a building modeler component for creating entire building models from scratch or working with models imported from DXF or gbXML file formats. Regardless of the origin and source of the building model inside IES/VE, design engineers can apply a wide range of analytical tools. Module categories include VE/Mechanical, VE/Electrical, and VE/Lighting, which performs analyses of both natural and artificial lighting. VE/Thermal includes several tools — Apache and MacroFlo among them — for total building and room-by-room energy calculation, simulation, and heating/ventilation/air conditioning (HVAC) system design. VE/Solar supports suncasting studies (figure 1), and VE/CFD (computational fluid dynamics, an analytical technique for studying airflows and temperature differentials) determines the effects of air movement and the resulting occupant comfort (figure 2). VE/Costs, including CostPlan lifecycle analysis, and VE/Value are sophisticated economic analysis modules. These IES/VE modules and other IES tools are accessible via one-click buttons down the left-side navigation pane of the main IES/VE screen.
 Figure 2. Computational fluid dynamics is used in IES/VE for tasks such as determining occupant comfort in air-conditioned spaces. |
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About the Author: Jerry Laiserin
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