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Sustainable design
About EcoDesigner, Energy Evaluation, Life Cycle Assessment, etc.

ArchiCAD PHPP output via energy evaluation and/or BIM2PH

JamesLEDA2
Newcomer
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
using ArchiCAD 24 on a Mac usually
Passive House Designer & Architectural Technician
Leeds Environmental Design Associates
https://www.leda.coop/
https://www.facebook.com/leda.coop/
https://twitter.com/leda_coop
30 REPLIES 30

@furtonb wrote:

I get, that there seems to be low demand, but there seems no point trying (I am happy to be proven otherwise).


Yes, no point trying and that is a symptom of a development strategy focused on surveys and user-cases rather than foresight and innovation. GS hesitate to do anything without a perceived demand which puts AC in a stagnant state of fragmented ad-hoc fixes to small problems. You can't neglect developing concepts fundamental to model and manage both information and geometries and at the same time expect users to express a demand for higher level workflows.

 

If AC is to aid us designing sustainable buildings we need to be able to work with a systems/construction/component structure, we need to be able to model geometries freely with different LOD, and we need to be able to easily compare different alternatives and represent change. (The last point underlines how shortsighted the implementation design options was with respect to sustainability.)

 

If they get that in place and the demand/interest for workflows regarding sustainable design will soar (we don't have much choice) but they seem content doing another survey:

Sustainable design key aspects
• What are the key pain points regarding sustainability in your business?
• What tools are being used by your team to tackle down those issues?
• Which aspects are very well covered by solutions you have?
• Which aspects lack a good solution currently?
• How do you connect to your local material databases, and how well those satisfy your needs?