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

EcoDesigner Demo Limitations?

genarch
Enthusiast
I built a very simple model to test EcoDesigner, running ArchiCAD in demo mode. However, when I click 'Start Evaluation' nothing happens! Is this a limitation of the demo mode?

Edit: A little more than 'nothing' happens. I see a progress window that says "Energy balance simulation in progress... Please wait..." Then it goes back to the EcoDesigner window without displaying any results from the evaluation.
MacOS Sonoma

AC27&26, Artlantis 2020, TwinMotion

Mac Studio M2 Max 2024
1 REPLY 1
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
[Message delayed a day or two due to forum problem...]

I unplugged my WIBU key so that both AC 12 and ED are running in demo mode.

I am unable to assign alternative U values to fills, but am able to get a model that will evaluate by assigning cut fills to elements that correspond to fills in the ED database that have U values.

Once that is done, the Start Evaluation button is enabled, and clicking it gives me a report, after a brief pause. Perhaps your building is really complicated. See if you can get the demo to do something with just a 4-wall box.

Model Review comes up - but you are unable to reassign surface functions in the demo.

The report that displays has a diagonal stamp through it that says "Demo version. Save, copy and teamwork functions are disabled."

So, basically, it gives you a way of seeing what all of the dialogs look like, but not really doing much.

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB