Over two decades ago, the non-profit Architecture 2030 was founded with an urgent mission to “rapidly transform the built environment from the major emitter of greenhouse gasses to a central solution to the climate crisis.”
A few years later, the AIA launched its own initiative, followed by RIBA, urging design firms to achieve carbon-neutral projects by 2030 — which is just five years away.
While resources have since been created and shared to support the design and delivery of sustainable projects, giving architects early access to energy-related insights is an essential step in making these targets a reality.
Enter Enscape Impact — an exciting new add-on for Enscape that provides architects and designers with early-stage building performance simulation within their design and visualization workflow. Now, it’s possible to see the impact of design decisions on energy use at the earlier stages of design.
In this quick-start guide, we’ll introduce you to the topic of building performance analysis and Enscape Impact, showing you how to use the new add-on in your existing design workflow.
What is building performance analysis?
Building performance analysis (BPA) is a process used to evaluate and optimize a building's efficiency, sustainability, and functionality throughout its lifecycle.
It involves assessing various aspects of a building's performance, including energy consumption, environmental impact, and system capacities, to ensure the building meets its operational and sustainability goals.
Importance of early-stage building performance analysis
By including analysis early in the design process, architects can start to understand how their designs will impact energy use and building performance, leading to more optimized and higher-performing buildings.
What is Enscape Impact?
It’s a new Enscape add-on (currently in beta) that integrates real-time rendering with early-stage building performance analysis.
While designing, it’s possible to evaluate building energy analysis using metrics such as peak loads, total operational carbon emissions, energy end use, energy use intensity, and more.
You can also visualize the simulation on a rendered view of your building, all accessible through Enscape and your CAD or BIM tool.
One of the most powerful tools at an architect's disposal is building performance simulation. Especially when conducted early and often in the design process, building simulation helps designers test design solutions to cost-effectively optimize performance beyond energy to improve occupant comfort and resilience.
The Architect’s Guide to Building Performance, AIA
Available to try for free
Enscape Impact is currently in beta for Windows users and is available to try for free if you have an Enscape license or trial using version 4.1. While the beta is available at no extra charge for now, there will be a fee when Enscape Impact officially launches (currently targeted for the end of the year).
Compatible with architecture design software
Enscape Impact works directly within Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Vectorworks, and Archicad. As an add-on to Enscape, our real-time rendering plugin, users enjoy seamless integration with leading architecture design software.
This gives architects and designers access to design, visualization, and now early-stage building performance simulation, all within the same workflow.
Developed with IES, leaders in sustainable analysis technology
Enscape Impact was developed in collaboration with IES, a global climate tech company renowned for innovative technology solutions to help decarbonize the built environment.
For over 30 years, IES has established itself as a leader in integrated performance-based analysis, with a world-renowned building physics analytics team.
We’re excited to be working with IES and look forward to working on further enhancements to make the tool even more powerful and effective for sustainable design in the near future!
How analysis is calculated in Enscape Impact
Enscape Impact gathers high-level data choices from your model, including layout, building age, location, and type. This is then sent to IES’s APACHE engine, renowned as one of the world’s leading whole-building energy simulation engines.
The APACHE engine uses these high-level data choices to determine appropriate detailed thermal properties and systems suitable to your building and location. This includes details like building fabric, operational schedules, internal space conditions, typical internal loads, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system types.
APACHE uses data sets from various sources, such as weather data and ASHRAE standards (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers), to accurately estimate these values. For buildings outside the US or Europe, the tool will compare them to buildings that match the climate zone of the location you selected.
Finally, APACHE performs a dynamic thermal simulation, accounting for sun shading, solar gain, and heat transfer processes. The result is a comprehensive estimation of energy usage for both the building and its equipment.
How to access Enscape Impact
To access the beta version, download Enscape 4.1 which is free for existing customers. New users can enjoy a 14-day free trial of Enscape’s real-time rendering software, which includes access to the Enscape Impact beta.
After downloading and installing, open Enscape and look for the Impact icon in the toolbar of the Enscape viewport. You can also press the ‘N’ hotkey to open the Enscape Impact dashboard, which will initially be empty.
Where to enter your building information
To enter your building project data into Enscape Impact, click on the ‘Settings’ tab.
There are currently three required fields and one optional (more will be added in time):
- Location*
- Building Type*
- Build Year*
- Last Renovation
Location
The location and orientation should automatically be pulled from your design software if it is set up correctly there. If not, you can manually enter the location here.
Building Type
Currently, there are 6 building types to choose from, but this will expand in time.
Select from Single Family, Multiple Family, Office, School or University, Hospital, or Dining.
Build Year
For the build year, you can choose either the original construction date or a future date for planned construction.
Last Renovation
This field is not mandatory, but if appropriate, you can add the date when the building was last renovated.
Click on the ‘Dashboard’ tab to start the analysis, which will take a short time to process.
Visualizing the metrics
Once the analysis is complete, several metrics will provide a quick snapshot of a building's expected energy performance.
Peak Loads: This represents the combined total of heating energy, cooling energy, internal gains, and solar gains, helping to determine the capacity needed for systems like HVAC.
Total Carbon Emission: This shows the predicted annual carbon dioxide emission factors for the location.
Energy Use Intensity (EUI): This metric measures a building’s energy consumption per unit area, with a lower EUI indicating greater energy efficiency.
Energy End Use: This highlights the specific purposes for which energy is consumed within a building, helping to identify opportunities for energy savings through more efficient technologies or practices.
To visualize the building performance simulation on your model, click on the ‘Settings’ tab once again and toggle on ‘False Color’. You can then select each of the four outputs (Peak Loads, Heating Energy, Cooling Energy, and Solar Gains) to review them as a color scale distributed onto the entire building.
Your model will turn white, and colors will be applied to reflect the results of the data analysis. From here, you can demonstrate a building’s energy consumption to stakeholders or analyze and adjust your design further to improve its energy efficiency.
Share your feedback
As Enscape Impact is currently in beta, we would very much appreciate your feedback to help us further improve the tool. Please complete our short survey, and if appropriate, share your log files via the Feedback button in Enscape.
Dive deeper into the topic of building performance
If you’d like to learn more about incorporating energy modeling from the earliest design phases as part of a whole-life building performance approach, then the new whitepaper from the IES and Enscape Impact teams is a must-read.
Designing for Impact: Enhancing Building Performance Through Early-Stage Analysis explores how early-stage analysis can significantly enhance a building’s lifecycle performance. This is a key step in delivering spaces that are better for the environment and for the people who use them.
Learn why the performance gap occurs and the importance of reducing it, typical barriers preventing more widespread adoption of building performance simulation and the benefits of incorporating it into the early stages of design.
Additional learning resources
For further information on Enscape Impact and building performance, here are some useful resources.
- 📑 AIA: Architect’s Guide to Building Performance
- 📑 Whitepaper: Enhancing Building Performance Through Early-Stage Analysis
- 📄 Enscape Impact Knowledge Base article
- ▶️ Video: An introduction to Enscape Impact and its main features
- ▶️ Video: How Enscape Impact works
Try Enscape Impact beta for free
For now, Enscape Impact is included with an Enscape license or trial (on Windows, with version 4.1), giving you a chance to test the beta version and explore our new building performance simulation add-on. While the beta is free, there will be a fee for Enscape Impact when it officially launches (currently scheduled for the end of the year).
FAQs
How do you measure building performance?
By looking at various aspects of a building's functionality during the design process, e.g., energy efficiency, where you would measure energy consumption, such as heating, cooling, lighting, and overall electricity use through simulation software.
What are the different types of building performance simulations?
According to the AIA, there are three categories of simulations and analyses. Early investigations, single-aspect simulations (such as massing and orientation, solar and shading, daylight and glare) and whole-building energy simulations (such as HVAC system selection modeling and as-designed energy performance).
How does Enscape Impact compare with other building performance analysis tools?
Enscape Impact eliminates the gap between energy modeling and design visualization, empowering architects to integrate high-quality real-time visualization and early-stage building performance analysis for the first time.
