Working at Building Level - Blocks and Solar Collectors

At building level you can:

• Add Blocks - Building blocks, Component blocks and Outline blocks.
• Edit Block geometry using a range of different block editing tools.
• Add Solar collectors - PV and solar hot water.

The rest of this topic about adding various types of block.

Blocks are the basic elements used to create a 3-D DesignBuilder model. Three types of block can be added to the building:

• Building Blocks are the mechanism used in DesignBuilder to create 3-D building volumes. They are often referred to in simply as Blocks and are composed of building elements such as walls, floor slabs and roofs . Building blocks may be partitioned internally to form a number of zones.
• Outline Blocks are used to help in the creation of more complex building block geometry.
• Component Blocks are used to create visual, ground and shading structures which do not contain zones.

Blocks of all types are created at the Building Level in the same way and are drawn using perimeters which can be extruded either horizontally, vertically, or in any other direction.

This section describes the various operations involved in creating and editing blocks at the building level.

To create or edit a block you must first go to the building level and you can do this by clicking on the building entry in the navigator or if you're at the site level and you want to edit an existing building, you can double-click on the building in the 'Edit' screen.

Either operation will take you to the building level: