Building diagnostics are the features that tell you how your building is performing and why. The Advisor suggests ways to redesign your building to improve performance. This chapter describes Energy Scheming's different output features including the printed and screen reports.
Energy Scheming's printed output is called the Energy Performance Report. It is composed of all the information you have specified about the building as well as an evaluation of the building's energy performance.
Before you print the graphic report, you can view the whole report or details of it on the screen. Viewing the report while you are designing allows you to study the building loads and to modify the design to improve its performance.
The printed graphic report can be used to study the calculations in detail or to compare several versions of the design.
Advisor report: Lists the advice as presented in the Advice window.
When you are using Energy Scheming, you can view the graphic report from both Draw Mode and Takeoff Mode.
Graphic Report
• Pull down the View Menu.
• Click on Graphic Report (command 2).
The graphic report contains a set of four bar graphs, one bar for each evaluation day you have selected.
• Scroll through the window to see all four days.
Note: You may set the display to four days or one day per screen. (Choose Preferences from the Options menu).
Days
You can view energy flows for all or only one of the evaluation days you selected.
• Click on "All Days" or the box in front of each day you wish to view.
Hourly Report Display
You can include information about the climate data and energy strategies used in the detailed hourly report. Simply click in the appropriate box.
Increment (Scale)
The vertical scale (in Btuh) on the graph is fixed. However, you can change the values of that vertical scale in two ways.
• Define the increment or the value between one mark to the next mark on the graph.
• Define the maximum value of the vertical scale.
Energy Scheming calculates the loads for your building. These loads determine the size of the equipment required to heat and cool your building, and, given the efficiency of the mechanical equipment, the amount of energy used by the building for heating and cooling.
Information about how the building uses energy is graphically conveyed in four ways:
• Click on Print Energy Performance Report (command P) from
the File menu.
• Select those portions of the report you wish to print.
Reducing Excess Heat Gain
Reducing Excess Heat Loss
This feature lets you view the heat flows directly on the drawing. The takeoffs are colored to represent the rate of heat flow for that takeoff for each hour calculated. This allows you to explore the contributions of different elements and compare side-by-side alternatives.
Thermographics can be viewed after the calculations are complete. To view them move the graphic report and drawing windows so that the takeoffs and at least one graph are visible onscreen at the same time. From the View menu select Show Thermographics.
Note: The hour for which thermographics are being drawn is displayed in the drawing window's titlebar.
You browse the thermographics by dragging the paintbrush located to the left of the zero line in the graphs. To do this:
• Click once on the paintbrush.
&endash; While holding the mouse button down move the cursor back and forth across the graph.
The takeoffs will appear as various shades of red or blue, red representing heat gain and blue being heat loss. The intensity of the color denotes the relative magnitude of the rate of gain or loss. Note that the colors represent the rate of heat flow (Btu/h,sf) and not the amount (Btu/h). Takeoffs that appear white have no heat flow.
Paintbrush
There are three types of heat flow possible through windows: conduction, solar gain, and ventilation. Each of these flows is shown separately for each window.
For displaying thermographic information each window takeoff is
drawn with a "frame". The color of the frame indicates conduction
gains or losses. The center of the takeoff shows solar gain.
Ventilation losses are shown as arrows outside of the takeoff. Cross
vent arrows are oriented horizontally while stack vent arrows are
vertical. If the window is acting as an inlet the head of the arrow
is pointing into the window. Likewise outlet arrows are drawn coming
out of the window.
Infiltration/minimum ventilation is displayed as a group of arrows within occupancy takeoffs. If there are no occupancy takeoffs the arrows are drawn in the middle of the drawing window.
Mass in walls, roofs and floors is shown on these takeoffs similarly to solar gain in windows. Conduction through these takeoffs appear a a frame and mass gain or loss in the inner field. If the mass was specified independently the mass takeoff itself is displayed thermographically.
A wall with mass
The thermographics are drawn opaque. This means that if there are
any takeoffs which overlap only the topmost is visible. This is
commonly the case, for example, in occupant specs where takeoffs are
often created by associating the floor takeoff to the spec. In these
cases you will have to drag the takeoffs apart to view all of them.
Roof, floor, occupants, equipment, and lighting zone takeoffs have
the element icon drawn in their lower left corner to help you know
which is which.
The color chip floats in the drawing/takeoff window. It displays a key for the colors of the animated takeoffs. By comparing the color of a thermographic takeoff to the color chip you can tell what it's rate of heat flow is. It also tells you what the maximum rates of gain and loss are for the current energy calculations. The color chip can be moved around in both takeoff and draw modes.
You can change the number of color increments and the rate that the darkest colors represent in the Preferences screen. The "No. of color divisions" item sets the number of gain and loss shades.
Color Chip
For example, if you set this to 5 you will see five intensities of red (gain) and 5 intensities of blue (loss).
The color settings of your monitor will make a difference as to how many shades of each color are distinguishable. If you set the monitor for 256 colors the most shades that can be discerned is about 5. If the monitor is set for thousands of colors or better you will be able to see many more colors.
The color scale is determined by dividing the number of color divisions into the rate represented by the darkest color. This rate is set in the Preferences item labeled "Set darkest colors at". Any takeoffs with rates greater than this number will appear as the darkest red or blue. By manipulating these Preferences settings you can adjust the level of detail of the thermographics.
The Advisor is an expert system that analyzes how your building is performing and suggests ways to make it perform better. It gives advice in the context of whatever days have been calculated, meaning it considers all days when deciding which advice to display. It compiles a complete list of solutions that will improve performance. Often, though, doing only a few of the changes will solve all your building's thermal problems. Depending on how you choose to receive the advice the Advisor will present some or all of the solutions.
The Advisor is made active by choosing Turn Advisor On from the Advice menu. By also selecting Turn Balloons On you can receive advice in the drawing/takeoff window. When turned on after energy calculations are complete the Advisor will compile a list of advice. Afterwards it will run automatically each time the energy results are recalculated.
If advice balloons are active, pointing to any takeoff in the drawing/takeoff window will bring up a balloon with advice for that takeoff. The advice displayed in the balloon are those changes the Advisor believes are most important to consider. There may be some takeoffs that say "No advice." Working on these takeoffs is less likely to improve performance.
Note: If the advice does not fit in the balloon, an ellipsis (...)
appears at the end.
You may or may not be able or want to make the changes suggested in
the balloons, for instance if the advice is to add mass but the
project's budget precludes it. Or you may prefer to see all advice at
once and decide for yourself which are most relevant to your design
intentions and constraints. In this case you can see the complete
list of advice for all elements by selecting Advice Window from the
View menu.
The advice window items are organized by architectural categories. The categories and messages within each category are ranked from worst to best in terms of the magnitude of the problems that generated the advice. Ideally you would work on the uppermost items first in order to improve performance the most.
Initially you see only headings for the categories; the advice is hidden in the manner of an outline. To see the advice for a category
• Click on the triangle to the left of a category.
The advice for that category is shown now. Notice that some of the messages have triangles next to them. Clicking on these presents more detail about the advice.
You will also notice that the advice is colored. The advisor assigns color to a message based on what it thinks is the message's importance relative to the other messages.
Note: The colors represent the relative magnitude of the problems that generated a piece of advice.
One method to print results from Energy Scheming is to print the Energy Performance Report from the File menu. However you may prefer to use your word processor and copy/paste images from Energy Scheming and create your own report. This method offers more flexibility in formatting and is a good way of documenting on-going work.
Using the marquee tool you can copy portions of the drawing/takeoff window, graphic report, schedules and other screens. To do this with the marquee tool:
You can also copy text in the Advice Window. To do this simply select the items you wish to copy as you would in any other text editor, choose Copy from the Edit menu, switch to your word processor and choose Paste.
