ArchiCAD PHPP output via energy evaluation and/or BIM2PH

[JamesLEDA2]

firstly, please don't banish this threat to the Sustainable Architecture section to be ignored with the tumbleweeds.

I am trying to get some meaningful output from ArchiCAD 23 (Solo) to PHPP (Passive House Planning Papckage, an energy evaluation spreadsheet for which Graphisoft claims it support and export for).

With ArchiCAD there are 2 claimed methods, using the Energy Evaluation export, or using the BIM2PH software as an intermediate piece of software.

My attempts with each of these approaches results in the following....

Energy Evalaution - the energy evaluation method does populate the PHPP spreadsheet with data from your project quite nicely, however, the data is incorrect for several reasons, the ones I have identified include, I get no area information for the roof or floor, only walls, the walls already have the window areas subtracted which results in a secondary subtraction in the PHPP, the reference planes are internal and the Passive House methodology uses internal measuremnets, making the data completeluy useless.

BIM2PH - this software supports IFC from several BIM packagaes, from my tests, it works fine with Revis IFC files, however, with ArchiCAD IFC files, the software closes when attempting to open the IFC file for conversion.

I've had little to no help from wither Graphisoft and/or the Passive House Institute with either to the software, despite the fact that the methods almost work.

Any information and/or experience on the above would be greatly appreciated,

Kind regards

[Anonymous]

mnguyen wrote:

stetuv wrote:
Hi James, did you solve your issue? I'm also interested in the exportation workflow from Archidad to PHPP, If yes would you be so kind to share your experience?

Hi,

Thank you for your interest in the issue!

May I ask what can I help you with? We have some articles about Energy Evaluation workflow in our HelpCenter. You can always have a look here, or if you have any specific questions, feel free to let me know!

Have a nice weekend, and stay safe!

Best regards,
Minh

Hi,
thank you for the fast reply. I am starting to study how works the Energy Evaluation in Archicad and I am also interested in how the data can be exported to fill properly a PHPP file to make a Passivhaus simulation. At the moment I have not a specific question yet but as James has talked about some issues during the exportation, I was curious to know what happened. I have a feeling that it might depend on how the model has been created and the fact that "a classical BIM model" with 3D structure components might not work for a PHPP file. For example when you create the model using the DesingPH app (that works on Sketchup) its componentes are made of simple flat surfaces (with no thikness). Anyway, do you have a guide that explains how to create the model for PHPP exportation?

KR

[Minh Nguyen]

stetuv wrote:

Hi,
thank you for the fast reply. I am starting to study how works the Energy Evaluation in Archicad and I am also interested in how the data can be exported to fill properly a PHPP file to make a Passivhaus simulation. At the moment I have not a specific question yet but as James has talked about some issues during the exportation, I was curious to know what happened. I have a feeling that it might depend on how the model has been created and the fact that "a classical BIM model" with 3D structure components might not work for a PHPP file. For example when you create the model using the DesingPH app (that works on Sketchup) its componentes are made of simple flat surfaces (with no thikness). Anyway, do you have a guide that explains how to create the model for PHPP exportation?

KR

Hi,

Let me first share with you our official guide on how to use Energy Evaluation feature and the EcoDesigner STAR manual, so that you can find out how the tool works:

Energy Evaluation Guide: https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/user-guide-chapter/85167/

EcoDesigner STAR Guide: https://www.graphisoft.com/ftp/marketing/edstar/EcoDesigner_STAR_User_Manual.pdf

I would like to emphasize one important point about the Energy Evaluation feature: ARCHICAD's Energy Evaluation and EcoDesigner STAR features are not a certification or auditing tool for energy evaluation purposes. It is a design-aid tool, hence it is found under the Design bar menu.

With regard to PHPP, we are currently compatible with the PHPP v9 Excel sheet. ARCHICAD can export and implement some of the information needed for the PHPP certificate, but not everything (again, Energy Evaluation and EcoDesigner STAR features are just a design-aid tool to help architects in energy-conscious design).

Exporting to PHPP v9 is done directly within ARCHICAD's Energy Model Review palette, given that a proper BEM (Building Energy Model) is formed and a PHPP v9 or older Excel template is available. When you wish to export to PHPP, a prompt dialog asks to browse for the said PHPP excel sheet.

I hope this will help you with using the tool!

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
Minh

[Anonymous]

Hi,
thank you again for the reply.

KR

[jrmrt]

I spent some time on this issue and this is where the main problem comes from. PHPP needs the total surface area to the outside face of any assembly (wall, roof, floor). Technically, it's to the outside face of the exterior insulation, but to keep things simple, let's try to get it to the outside face of the assembly.

The way that the AC Energy Model exports the surface areas currently is to the inside face of the assemblies (see attachments). This is the data that is received by PHPP during the export.

I created a morph to show what we would want, and scheduled it according to what PHPP needs. I also created some additional properties in order to schedule this.

The area for the highlighted wall (the south wall) according to the Energy Model is 198 sq ft, but if you look at the morph I created, that area is supposed to be 395 sq ft.

The thing that is being exported correctly are the openings. We want the rough opening dimensions to be exported into PHPP, and the AC Energy Model does just that.

What would be great is if we could assign morphs as structures for this export to PHPP, as I've seen that getting an accurate exterior surface area from ArchiCAD doesn't always work as we would like it to. I had to create a property to do this accurately, where I multiply the length of the Wall Reference Line by the total Height of the Wall. However, the problem with that is that sometimes we will need to assign areas with a different exterior conditions which most times don't fit exactly the surface areas of a specific wall, hence having the flexibility of a morph would be great.

Furthermore, the export to PHPP does not work well with the IP version of the software.

As of right now, I would like to know if we could export specific portions of schedules to specific areas of an Excel sheet. That seems to be exactly what the Energy Model export is doing, so if we could modify that as we need it, that would excellent!

Thank you for your help with this.

[Minh Nguyen]

jrmrt wrote:
I spent some time on this issue and this is where the main problem comes from. PHPP needs the total surface area to the outside face of any assembly (wall, roof, floor). Technically, it's to the outside face of the exterior insulation, but to keep things simple, let's try to get it to the outside face of the assembly.

The way that the AC Energy Model exports the surface areas currently is to the inside face of the assemblies (see attachments). This is the data that is received by PHPP during the export.

I created a morph to show what we would want, and scheduled it according to what PHPP needs. I also created some additional properties in order to schedule this.

The area for the highlighted wall (the south wall) according to the Energy Model is 198 sq ft, but if you look at the morph I created, that area is supposed to be 395 sq ft.

The thing that is being exported correctly are the openings. We want the rough opening dimensions to be exported into PHPP, and the AC Energy Model does just that.

What would be great is if we could assign morphs as structures for this export to PHPP, as I've seen that getting an accurate exterior surface area from ArchiCAD doesn't always work as we would like it to. I had to create a property to do this accurately, where I multiply the length of the Wall Reference Line by the total Height of the Wall. However, the problem with that is that sometimes we will need to assign areas with a different exterior conditions which most times don't fit exactly the surface areas of a specific wall, hence having the flexibility of a morph would be great.

Furthermore, the export to PHPP does not work well with the IP version of the software.

As of right now, I would like to know if we could export specific portions of schedules to specific areas of an Excel sheet. That seems to be exactly what the Energy Model export is doing, so if we could modify that as we need it, that would excellent!

Thank you for your help with this.

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your experience with EcoDesigner!

Unfortunately, it is correct that, the way we are handling surface areas in EcoDesigner is not in sync with PHPP. Right now ARCHICAD indeed only considers the inside face of the exterior assemblies (walls, roofs, etc.). The exterior face of the exterior assemblies are not considered.

I hope that in the future, we can provide more options in order to support more Energy Evaluation standards.

Thank you for your understanding! Have a great day!

Best regards,
Minh

[JamesLEDA2]

If this is the case, then as I have been stating all this time, the PHPP export feature is useless as the User completing the PHPP then has to manually add in the extra area for it to be valid, which, to be honest, will be more onerous than just manually doing it in the first place......

[Andy Thomson]

Hi all, I just tested this. The exterior surface area noted by ED in AC24 appears identical to the exterior area of a modelled SLAB (not Morph) I just drew up to check it - I didn't bother to trim it to the top surface of the roof as it's within 97% anyways, good enough for me. The Morph tends to give a different total surface area as per the 'Element Information' palette. ED is very sensitive to the accuracy of the interior zones based on the interior wall method. If when you go to Design/Update Zones, any zones that don't update accurately or were drawn manually cause errors. I am writing a simplified manual on modelling with ED as I don't feel many ppl will actually get through the 400 odd page ED manual. So I don't think it is summing the interior surfaces, but knows enough to determine the overall volume from the assembly/composite thicknesses bordering the zones.

[Foti]

I agree with JamesLEDA2, I don't even bother with the energydesign, I do the PHPP manually. I know they have a designPH but that for sketchup which would make no sense if work in AC to export out to sketch to get the PHPP info only to go back to AC and so on. The Bim2PH I have not used yet but would it not be very beneficial for Graphisoft to just work with Passivhaus and directly incorporate the PHPP into AC, that would be a great game changer.

foti

[JamesLEDA2]

FFFFF wrote:
I agree with JamesLEDA2, I don't even bother with the energydesign, I do the PHPP manually. I know they have a designPH but that for sketchup which would make no sense if work in AC to export out to sketch to get the PHPP info only to go back to AC and so on. The Bim2PH I have not used yet but would it not be very beneficial for Graphisoft to just work with Passivhaus and directly incorporate the PHPP into AC, that would be a great game changer.

foti

THAT WOULD BE A DREAM!
Unfortunately, BIM2PH is not currently supported by PH due to the funding for the project running out (don't get me started on that! release and see a product but offer no support), p.s. It doesn't work with AC at present....

It's crazy that PHI and Graphisoft have both created products to do the same job, without working together to actually make them work!
BIM2PH doesn't work because of its failure to use an effective template to export IFC data and EnergyDesign doesn't work because they don't know how to effectively populate a PHPP!

Surely when developing something as specialist as either of these two offerings the respective organisation would actually research the other product!

[Andy Thomson]

While I can't speak for Graphisoft, the detailed consideration for vertical (by structure) thermal bridges and lateral (psi) thermal bridge simulation and addition of length parameters (you model every lateral detail, and provide a length multiplier in the structures list view), as well as window installation psi values, appears that EcoDesigner's developers were in fact aiming to align 100% with PHPP. In fact I wrote a blog on this here: https://www.thomsonarchitecture.ca/2020/08/15/archicad-ecodesigner-and-passive-house/

I have yet to complete my PHPP course of study and exam, but it seems GS is 90% of the way towards a completed tool. The PHPP export works (tested to 9.6) but is partial, and Exterior Envelope Area needs to be calculated in 2 ways, for its own calculation methods, but also for PHPP export. This could considerably reduce the PHPP input process if export was consistent and reliable, not to mention well documented.