Introduction:

Once the Baseline scenario for your project has been created and saved, you can start exploring the impact of changing other factors to see their effect on the energy performance. These will be design variables – the items and strategies that you would like to evaluate as strategies and alternatives to improve building performance.

As you make changes to specific settings, it is useful to save your changes as scenarios to allow you to easily return to them and apply the same settings to different models as you explore and compare design alternatives.

In this exercise, you will learn how to:

• Set design variable factor ranges
• Save scenarios for comparison
• Track scenario results

This video shows the workflow for comparing the building’s performance of potential design scenarios in Insight.

Workflow Steps:

View Insight Results for the Model

• If needed, generate insights for this model
  • Click the Analyze tab and create the energy model.
  • Generate insights.
• Click Optimize to access the results.

Apply the Baseline Model

• Open the Scenario tab at the left side of the Insight window.
• Choose the Baseline Scenario to apply its settings as the starting point for your new analysis.

Set Design Variable Factor Ranges

• Scroll down the Insight interface to view the Window Glass – South factor.
• Select the Window Glass - South factor
• Drag the handles at the left and right ends of the factor range to select the type of window glass to be consider in the analysis.
• Select Sgl Clr for this scenario.

Save Scenarios for Comparison

• Select the Add Scenario button located at the top right of the model viewer.
• Click the Action button (the three dots to the right of the Untitled Scenario name), then choose Rename this scenario from the pop-up menu.
• Set the name of this scenario to Sgl Clr Windows - South.
• Repeat previous steps to change the value of the Window Glass - South factor to Trp LoE.
• Set the name of this scenario to Trp Low E Windows - South.

Track and Compare Scenarios Results

• Select Scenario Compare button located at the top right of the model viewer to display a side by side comparison of all the scenarios saved.

To display the EUI mean (or Annual Cost mean) of specific scenarios, click the bars in the Scenario Comparison panel.

Exercise:

In this exercise, you are not required to have Revit open, but you will need to access the Insight results of the previous exercise. Each simulation builds upon the previous one, so the changes you make will be additive, and you do not have to set the dashboard back to the Baseline state each time you create a scenario.

Follow the steps outlined below:

1. Your results are available either through Revit > Analyze > Optimize, or through the web on Insight360.Autodesk.com. For this exercise, we will explore the web interface, but you can also accomplish this Scenario-comparison exercise from the Revit Insight environment as well.
2. In your browser, log in to insight360.autodesk.com with the same user name as you used in Revit. Select ‘INSIGHTS’ to access all your available Insights. To make it easier to find factors by name, change the ‘Settings’ (gear icon) > sort by importance to ‘No’.
3. Open All Uncategorized and select the model you submitted previously from Revit. All new model results are ‘Uncategorized’ until grouped with a project. When grouped with a project, results can be compared to any other models included in that project.
4. Select the ‘Baseline’ scenario you defined from the previous exercise to set the dashboard back to this state. Tip: If you don’t see this scenario or did not define it in the last lesson, either re-run the previous model from Revit, or set all factor widget ranges to the full range, then follow the instructions for defining the ‘Baseline’ factor Scenario factor ranges.
5. Define a new Scenario with the following settings to visualize the impact of typical settings for optimized building glazing area:
   • Set a single value range for the following factors:
     • WWR - Southern Wall: 65%
     • WWR - Western Wall: 30%
     • WWR - Northern Wall: 80%
     • WWR - Eastern Wall: 30%
   • Add this Scenario and rename it as Optimized Glazing
6. ​Starting again with the ‘Baseline’ Scenario, define a new Scenario with the following settings to visualize the impact of specifying moderately high-performance glass:
   • Set a value for the following factors:
     • Window Glass - South: Dbl LoE
     • Window Glass - West: Dbl LoE
     • Window Glass - North: Dbl LoE
     • Window Glass - East: Dbl LoE
   • Add this Scenario and rename it as Dbl LoE Glazing
7. ​Starting again with the ‘Baseline’ Scenario, define a new Scenario with an improved specification for wall insulation to test the impact of high-insulation walls on the Baseline model.
   • Set a value for the following factors:
     • Wall Construction: 12.25 - inch SIP
   • Add this scenario and rename it as High Wall Insulation
8. ​Compare results
   • Select Scenario Compare in the top right.
   • Add this Scenario and rename it as Optimized Glazing