Autodesk Insight

Description

Insight 360 empowers architects and integrated teams with centralized access to performance data and advanced analysis engines. Through robust integration with Revit and FormIt 360 and direct access to guidance and recommendations from trusted simulation engines and industry benchmarks, architects can approach the design process with understanding of the elements that lead to better building performance outcomes throughout the building lifecycle. Energy Cost Range and Performance Factors Get access to building performance when it matters most—during the design process! You can access the Insight 360 from Autodesk Revit or Autodesk FormIt 360 Pro and instantly reveal a range of potential design outcomes through the Energy Cost Range factors. These factors help you quickly identify key energy performance drivers such as lighting power density, HVAC systems, or window-wall ratio just to name a few. Quickly Compare Design Scenarios As you specify the factor ranges for your design scenarios, you can easily measure performance against Architecture 2030 and ASHRAE 90.1 benchmarks, making early targeting and feasibility seamless. With millions of potential design scenarios at your fingertips, visualizing the impact of orientation, envelope, WWR, lighting equipment, schedules, HVAC, and even PV has never been easier. Insight 360 allows you to save and compare your design scenarios to track performance spanning the building lifecycle in a consistent and cohesive manner. Share your insights with project stakeholders and access all your outcomes anywhere. Heating and Cooling Loads with EnergyPlus Insight 360 is harnessing the power of EnergyPlus Cloud to deliver dynamic thermal heating and cooling loads for models created in Revit and FormIt 360 Pro. Generate tabular reports from Revit, or visualize heating and cooling loads in the Insight 360 web interface to instantly call attention to spaces that will be susceptible to higher loads. Solar Radiation & Photovoltaic Energy Production Visualize solar radiation on mass or building element surfaces directly in Revit or FormIt. Solar analysis includes an automated workflow for understanding PV energy production and value added. Settings such as panel type, percent coverage, and payback period make it easy to communicate performance expectations and feed this information back to the Energy Cost Range. PV energy production is accessible in Revit as well as through the Insight 360 web interface. Customizable Daylighting Results & Automated Documentation In addition to being able to perform LEED lighting analysis, you can also fully customize your lighting analysis settings. This means selecting any date and time, specifying your analysis plane, and a threshold. You can also generate illuminance renderings that include electric lighting with greater ease. A schedule is also automatically generated with the in canvas visualization, so you can dive into your results and use them for documentation purposes. Validation Insight 360 is proud to use validated industry leading analysis engines. • Whole building energy analysis from Revit, FormIt 360 Pro, and the Insight 360 interface is powered by Green Building Studio, a DOE-2.2 engine run in the cloud, and has been tested against ANSI/ASHRAE 140. • Insight 360 heating and cooling loads are calculated using EnergyPlus Cloud, and have also been tested against ANSI/ASHRAE 140. • The lighting and daylighting analyses use Autodesk 360 Rendering, a cloud based engine that uses bidirectional ray tracing. This engine has been validated against Radiance and real world measurements. • Insight 360 solar analysis uses an optimized Perez sky model and overshadowing calculation, validated with NREL provided test values. Photovoltaic panel libraries are updated often based on the range of panel types available in the US, European, and Chinese markets. Availability Insight 360 is available as a subscription benefit of Autodesk Revit and FormIt 360 Pro. Download the Revit plugin from the Downloads page at insight360.autodesk.com. With FormIt 360 Pro, no downloads are needed. Just select the Energy Cost icon to generate or access your insights.

External Link to Product Page:

Country:

Major Capabilities:

Whole Building Energy Simulation, Parametrics and Optimization, Lighting Simulation, Solar and Photovoltaic Analysis

Building Type:

Commercial, Residential, Multi Family

Keywords:

EnergyPlus

Languages:

English

Platform:

Web/Saas

Pricing:

Free for Non-Commercial/Academic Use, Free To Try

Help And Support:

Free Email Support, Peer Support Forum

Last Software Update:

December 22, 2015

Expertise Required:

No expertise is required to use Insight 360. For Autodesk FormIt 360 model geometry creation no expertise is required. Minimal 3D-CAD/BIM experience is required for model geometry creation with Autodesk Revit (though you need no special training in energy analysis). Energy Modelers can do more in-depth analysis.

Audience:

Insight 360 is for architects, engineers, owners, any stakeholder in building energy and environmental performance. While Insight 360 is especially useful for architects at early stages in the design process, engineers and owners will also appreciate the clear communication of performance expectations throughout the building lifecycle. • Architects at conceptual and schematic stages of the design process trying to make decisions about overall building form, orientation, shading, and materials while also managing client expectations and overall goals relative to energy and environmental performance. • Engineers and Energy Analysts at any stage in the building lifecycle who want to help guide an architect with advice on targeting and feasibility of goals. • Owners who want information to help inform targeting and feasibility, manage expectations, key assumptions, and better appreciate the trade-offs required for better performance.

Input:

In order for Insight 360 to perform whole building energy simulation, project location and geometry are required. Insight 360 automatically translates Revit or FormIt 360 architectural geometry to an energy analytical model. No additional inputs are needed for FormIt 360 users—an entire range of estimated costs (based on hundreds of thousands of pre-computed DOE2.2 whole building energy simulations that represent all worldwide climate zones and a wide range of typical building forms, functions and efficiencies) are displayed as soon as you open the sketching environment. Cost range estimates are dynamically updated as you enter in more project details. No additional inputs are needed for Revit users either, however users may specify additional input parameters such as unique envelope constructions, glazing properties, HVAC systems, thermal zones, as well as additional space requirements. Simulation variables that are not specified by the user are supplied by Autodesk Green Building Studio.

Output:

Insight 360 provides an interactive web based platform for understanding the key drivers of building energy use and sensitivity for each of those factors. Additional popular outputs of Insight 360 include: • Energy use • Energy cost • ASHRAE 90.1 and Architecture 2030 benchmarks • Automatic parametric studies • EnergyPlus heating & cooling room • Daylight and lighting illuminance based floor plans • Solar insolation visualized on model surfaces • Predicted PV energy generation

Strengths:

• Provides visualization and interaction with key performance indicators with real time cause and effect feedback to guide you towards better outcomes. • Works with Revit and FormIt 360 Pro to generate insights using robust automatic analytical model creation and visualization of performance information directly in the modeling environment. • Uses trusted industry leading simulation engines for whole building energy, heating, cooling, daylighting, and solar simulations with innovative parallel cloud computing techniques to represents millions of potential outcomes simultaneously. • Helps organize and share insights with other stakeholders to work towards better outcomes continuously and consistently from early targeting and feasibility all the way through to operation.