| Sustainability Workshop

Building Performance Analysis Curriculum

Welcome to the Building Performance Analysis Course. This course is a curated curriculum comprising of fundamental knowledge, software workflow and exercise. It is self-paced and each section will open in a different window.

We recommend following the modules order for best learning outcomes: click on the module title, read the opened page, close it and move to the next one module.

Introduction to the BPA Certificate

In this first module, we’ll provide a high-level understanding of the issues involved in sustainable, high-performance building design. Before you can start learning how to do Building Performance Analysis, it might be helpful to learn what it is, and why it’s important. We'll also take a closer look at design goals for both occupant comfort and resource use. Finally, we’ll ask ourselves: Where do software tools for building information modeling and building performance analysis fit in? Keep these guiding questions in mind as you move through this unit.

- What measurable impact do buildings have on the environment?

- How do decisions that designers make influence the environment?

- What goals are important to building design?

- What variables do you need to consider when making design decisions?

Environmental Impacts and Buildings
- BPA & BIM
- Environmental Issues & Building Design
Design Goals for High Performance Buildings
Design Workflows for BPA

Energy Literacy & Building Loads

In this module, we will cover how buildings use energy. You will learn about how energy flows through buildings, what factors contribute to building loads, and how all these factors contribute to a building’s total energy use. You will also learn how to produce heating and cooling load charts and conduct a conceptual energy analysis using Autodesk Revit. With this information, you will be able to evaluate a building’s energy performance and offer improvements for how to achieve a more energy efficient building.

Keep these guiding questions in mind as you move through this unit.

- What are heating and cooling loads, what are internal and external loads, and how are they related?

- What are the methods of heat transfer within buildings and how do building envelope constructions affect a building’s energy use?

- What are the steps for conducting conceptual energy analysis in Revit?

Climate & Weather Analysis

Regardless of what type of building you’re designing, the various environmental conditions, which are together described as “climate” (temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, and sky conditions) will be one of the first and most important factors that you study in the design process. Not only does climate have big implications for the type of materials and constructions you’ll want to use, it’s also going to tell you a lot about what types of passive design strategies are going to work in your favor.

In this module, you’ll study what climate conditions you should learn before making design decisions, and how these climate conditions will dictate your design decisions. You will also learn how to use Autodesk Revit to generate climate charts you can use to interpret energy analysis results.

Some of the guiding questions that you’ll be exploring in this lesson include:

- What are the important metrics that we use to understand climate (temperature, humidity, wind)?

- How does climate affect human thermal comfort?

- What are psychrometric charts and how to use them to assess the effectiveness of various design strategies?

Climate & Weather
Temperature & Humidity
Wind
- Wind
- Wind Rose Diagrams
Environmental Comfort
- Thermal Comfort
- Psychrometric Charts
Energy Performance and Climate - Workflow & Exercise

Solar Measurements & Strategies

In this module, you’ll study how the sun light and shadows move across your site. Harnessing the sun’s energy and light is one of the most important strategies for good passive design. You will need to know when you want to allow solar radiation to hit or enter your building and when you want to block it, then move on to specific strategies that will help you achieve designs that utilize the sun as an energy resource. You’ll finally learn how to use Revit and Insight to design photovoltaic systems.

Some of the guiding questions that you’ll be exploring in this module include:

- What defines the sun’s position in the sky?

- How will the massing and orientation, as well as shading devices of your building affect its solar access?

- How to use Revit and Insight to assess the amount of solar radiation available and PV Potential?

Sun and Sky Fundamentals
Passive Design
Active Design: Using Solar Radiation

Wind & Airflow Strategies

Just like passive heating, passive cooling is an important strategy for achieving an energy efficient building. Harnessing wind and controlling airflow is a key element for utilizing passive cooling through natural ventilation. In this module, you’ll study the basics of air movement and how air moves around your building as well as within your building. You will learn when wind can be helpful for passive cooling, and when it is considered a nuisance. Furthermore, you’ll learn about strategies you can use to enable and enhance natural ventilation in your building. Finally, you will learn how to visualize airflow around your building and how this visualization can translate to useful design decisions.

Some of the guiding questions that you’ll be exploring in this lesson include:

- If you want to use wind power, what are the considerations?

- What strategies can you employ to enhance natural ventilation within your building?

Daylighting Strategies and Analysis

In this module, you’ll study the basics of daylight and how it impacts visual comfort, interior space planning, and shading design. You will learn how to measure light and evaluate light levels. Based on this information, you will learn design strategies to help you use daylight to meet as much of your lighting needs as possible.

You’ll also learn how to interpret illumination renderings from Autodesk Revit so you can make design decisions informed by Revit’s built-in quantitative lighting analysis. This module builds on the Solar Measurements & Strategies course. Understanding the sun path and implications of solar radiation will help you make smart daylighting design decisions. If you haven’t already, we suggest you preview this module as a prerequisite.

Some of the guiding questions that you’ll be exploring in this lesson include:

- How does daylight relate to solar gain?

- How should you design your building to get the most even distribution of daylight?

- What model setup is required to generate valid daylight analysis results in Revit and how can you use the results to improve your design?

Fundamentals of Light
Strategies for Daylighting
Daylighting Analysis
- Illuminance rendering - Workflow & Exercise
- Evaluating Daylighting to Verify LEED Compliance

Whole Building Energy Analysis with Revit

This module will teach you how to use Revit to conduct whole building energy analysis on your building information model. You will start with some basic energy simulations, and then increase the complexity to show you how detailed you can make your model.

Some of the guiding questions that you’ll be exploring in this lesson include:

- What are the steps for conducting energy analysis in Revit with Conceptual, Schematic and Detailed models?

- What assumptions are associated with the default variables in Revit?

- What are the HVAC systems available to use for Energy Analysis?

Energy Analysis using Revit and Insight
- Basic workflow with conceptual models
- Workflow for schematic models
- Thermal properties in Revit and Insight
- Using Spaces in Revit
- Energy Analysis Fundamentals
High Performance Building Optimization
HVAC Systems

Software:

Revit

What could completing Autodesk BPA Course do for you?

Watch our two-minute video.