Archicad 26 OOTB Energy Evaluation & EcoDesigner Star SSA Forward, what’s the difference?

[mthd]

Hi, I am new to BEM. Can someone please tell me the difference between the Energy Evaluation toolset and the EcoDesigner Star SSA Forward that is supposed to be OOTB from AC26 on ?

BEM = Building Energy Model.

OOTB = Out Of the Box.

My region is Australia.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Check out this article:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Project-data-BIM/EcoDesigner-STAR/ta-p/304044

Towards the end of the article you will find the section titled

Energy Evaluation and EcoDesigner STAR features compared

This is where you will see the differences between the two solutions in table form. Here is also a screenshot of the table 

 

[mthd]

Thanks, so how would I be able to tell if it was activate in AC26 or later from the menu ?
I do have SSA forward and I can find the energy evaluation tools from the menu. I am in Australia, do I need to contact Central Innovations ?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Yes, maybe contacting them would be the thing to do. 

[mthd]

Hi all, I was exploring the option of either using Archicad EcoDesigner Star and a commonly used software in Australia to perform an energy simulation calculation of residential buildings.

I found this paper that made a direct comparison of results with EcoDesigner Star and FirstRate5 software (Commonly used in Aus). They make a comparison between these two simulation engines with 3 building type scenarios. I was very surprised with the discrepancy in the results and EcoDesigner Star was definitely more accurate since it is 3D software.

For anyone who is interested in reading the 10 page paper, please follow this link.

https://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/caadria2014_042.content.pdf