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Despite the promises of all software developers, there will always be areas where detailed issues have to be resolved. This is certainly the case where architects, used to modelling their buildings according to standards and practices set up over many years, come up against integrated applications that have a different set of priorities in order for them to work.

An interesting example of this is the Thrayle House Project in London, where developers, CBG Consultants, daily users of IES Virtual Environment (IESVE), were charged with integrating the IES Revit plug-in into their working practice. Amongst the challenges that quickly arose was the fact that the architectural model showed walls that only went up to ceiling height, whilst for analysis purposes, the rooms were required to go to slab height. The result was that IESVE was unable to calculate the correct room volumes.

First things first, though. CBG Consultants are an M&E Sustainability practice based in London and Oxford, and Thrayle House is a large apartment block in London Brixton. Similar issues were found with Thomas Gainsborough School in Suffolk, another of their projects that involved moving the architectural model from Revit to IESVE.

THRAYLE HOUSE
Another problem that IESVE engineers encountered at Thrayle House was that the Revit model was actually a series of linked models, one for each shell of the building and then separate ones for each apartment. The whole model along with the balconies (of which more later) was exported from Revit into IESVE.

IESVE engineers had to overcome issues connected to the linked models, which included correcting the room volumes and setting up IES rooms with 'inner volumes', and closing gaps in the model. The balconies proved more problematic however, and were not exported with the model. This is currently being addressed by both IESVE and Revit engineers.

CBG were able to overcome most of these challenges and discover the benefits of a BIM enabled workflow. The biggest gain came from being able to successfully export the entire building shell. Using modelIT the team were able to easily divide the model and then add all of the correct geometry, windows and openings.

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, SUFFOLK
The Thomas Gainborough School project came up with a different set of challenges, the most important of which were unexpected import errors. Typical of these were the segmented rooms, which had diagonal lines over each face, resulting in geometry which was not clear enough for analysis. It was also difficult to distinguish between windows and louvres. The architect’s vision was to have a structured opening with a fixed glaze panel next to a louvre, with the louvre providing the ventilation.

What caused the initial problem was the fact that the building was set up in phases, something which hadn't been accounted for in the architect's model. This was overcome by deleting the Room Separators, allowing CBG to resolve the segmentation and come up with much simpler and more accurate geometry.

Another challenge was easily fixed. This was caused by some elements (columns) being set up as room-boundings, while others weren't. In fact, certain columns should definitely not have been, as they created holes going through the entire building.

Once the main issues had been resolved, CBG were able to transfer a good model through to IES, where everything worked very well, with the exception of the windows and louvres issue which, although unresolved, is now well on the way to a solution. Overall they found the IES Revit plug-in to be a very useful tool.

According to Ross Thompson. Senior Sustainability and Energy Engineer at CBG Consultants, "Overall the integration between Revit and IESVE made modelling run a lot quicker and smoother. We have an unusual set-up where we have separate teams of Revit Engineers and IESVE Engineers, so it really helped us to work together better and to share our knowledge on both platforms.

"Features such as the ability to transfer data and the IES solar analysis tools were particularly useful for each of these projects. This whole process has really opened our eyes to the benefits of a being able to share experiences in a BIM enabled workflow."
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