Design Research: Get it Right with PreDesign

Thanks for your kind words, Dean.
To answer your question, the analysis is based on the same hourly historical weather data that consultants use for things like energy simulations and the like. It usually represents typical years based on what has happened in the past.
You can see the data we’ve used for Australia here: \climatewebsite\WMO_Region_5_Southwest_Pacific\AUS_Australia It’s relatively recent - not too many weather files from the 70’s! Most are from the past decade.
I’ve noted your request for future weather data to be added!
cheers, Andrew

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On our parts triple glazing is the norm, and the more environmentally conscious install windows with four panes of glass. In a house not designed for solar energy, the times when a window brings in more energy than it wastes tend to result to a need to use cooling in the room…

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Do you have plans for a user flow to design solar installations: show the solar exposure over the year for each external surface ?

Not to say that these new things are bad, but i really think sketchup is all over the place… I can’t find things that would make me exited about sketchup in years… I would love to see soft shadows in corners (Like vectorworks), that would be an improvment of the visuals, I would like to see a component like feature in layout. i would like to see sketchup and layout handeling large files a lot better, i would like to see layout not crash wile exporting to PDF. I would like to see great improvments on layout’s snaping sistem…The new icons are not going to do that for me… I like sketchup… but it’s getting hard to take it seriously

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Hi Richard,
I can’t talk about our future plans unfortunately but I will note that down as a feature request :slight_smile:

best
Andrew

can you please also note this down?:

I would love to see soft shadows in corners (Like vectorworks), that would be an improvment of the visuals, I would like to see a component like feature in layout. i would like to see sketchup and layout handeling large files a lot better, i would like to see layout not crash wile exporting to PDF. I would like to see great improvments on layout’s snaping sistem…

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Does this mean available to subscription licence holders only?

I wonder who will benefit most from Predesign? I can see that if you are a company with worldwide, or even continent-wide, ambitions, it’s a useful source of climate information. But for those of us working in a small geographical area, I’m guessing it would be less so - in that, every project would display the same climate characteristics. Or have I misunderstood its purpose?

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Agree with Simon. “Predesign” means so much more than energy analysis. Locally we know the methods that are used, and understood by local builders for energy conservation, then in design development the analysis is done based on California energy standards, which, along with CALGreen, will bring many more requirements into the project; more, frankly, than the owners or builders wish to do.

This could be helpful if it can provide some heads=up on general decisions such as siting and orientation (and actually show where a choice helps or hinders compliance).

Perhaps the most important use case for PreDesign is to help architects communicate how the climate affects a project to their clients.

Often people need to prove they have done some analysis to support that conversation. This gives our customers a way to do that easily, even if they already know about the climate themselves.

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I like the idea of being able to show this information to clients - kinda like the traditional site / climate analysis map - is there a way to download / store it as a presentation, or to insert things into layout, or do we need to do screensnaps? Or just show it to the client in house?
Thanks.,

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The options available now are essentially a live demonstration or screen grabs. We’ve already had a lot of requests like this though so it’s something we’ll be doing research into once people have started using the app so we can get more information on what could be the best ways to do this.

Thanks!

Hi

Is this based on only US Standards? Does the Pre Design feature also work in the UK?

Mike

It seems to work for the UK. I just did this for where another friend of mine lives.

sitting in an English garden? I like the descriptions. My! dull and dreary! Slithy toves too?

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It seems to be warmer than here, except in the summer!

So PreDesign is the answer from SketchUp to FormIt (Autodesk), I just saw some videos for, and it’s really similar.

Good competition :+1:

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That’s good news then.

Shame it does not come with the Classic License. I’ll either have to wait to transfer over to Subscription in May 2021, or transfer over my License early.

Mike

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It is annoying that Predesign not included with the Classic license — I understand (but don’t agree with) their earlier decisions to only offer things like the AR viewer to subscribers during the period when they were still trying to convince users to voluntarily convert to subs licenses.

But now that it’s a done deal, why be stingy in this way? If you’re SU wouldn’t you want all of your current license holders to benefit from the new tools you’ve built / acquired?

…especially since PreDesign was one of only two significant feature additions in 2021 — as it is, it seems that I paid my $120 M&S for Tag Folders alone! (a feature that I’m happy to see, but as the only new feature, the 2021 upgrade sure feels slight)

I get that there’s some issues involved in managing both sorts of license for a single user, but this seems imminently solvable — and not a good enough excuse not to offer it to Classic holders.

Hi Mike,
Sorry for the late reply! Yes it is designed to work for anywhere in the world.
There are areas where we used standards to help us work out how to present the information included, but these were just to build on what already exists - these implementations are not regionally specific or intended to constrain how the product is used (nor do they mean you comply with standards using PreDesign!)
Hope that helps!
Andrew

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