Rob wrote:
...
The point is that if you want to do this properly you need to have
serious professionals on board and I do not think that those products would qualify for this purpose anyway.
I couldn't agree more. GBS is a schematic design tool only. Using it during schematics has helped me illustrate a point to clients when they are pushing for a design solution that I intuitively know has severe energy and comfort penalties. ie: Recently an appended greenhouse facing an unshaded parking lot to the west for a kids after school assembly room. Big no-no in our climate, but GBS helped illustrate the benefits of a more elegant solution.
I don't use GBS to quote actual energy cost, but relative energy cost. That's all I expect from any program during schematics.
Another benefit of GBS is the ability to create gbxml files that in essence create a take off of the building envelope. Saving the "serious professional" time inputting this by hand.
Tom wrote:
I was excited by what Autodesk was charging. It was about 1/3 what it cost before they bought it, saving us ~$15,000 in annual licensing.
Glad to hear the cost came down for larger users. Still for a 3 person firm a monthly or per use fee is better, so we can spread the expense out over the entire year.
Perhaps I'm paranoid due to Autodesk's history of cornering the market with a less than the best solution then making interoperability difficult. I do see signs that their approach is changing. I'd still hate to see ArchiCad fall behind when one the major benefits of BIM is simplifying the process of designing high performance buildings.
CB
