Add New Building

You can add one or more new buildings from the site level. Each building has its own set of Model options and is simulated separately but shares site Model data with the other buildings on the site.

When you select the Add new building option you are presented with the Add new building dialog which allows you to make some basic settings:

• Building - basic setting for the building model
• Default Data - defaults for Construction, Activity, Glazing, Lighting and HVAC

When you press OK to close the dialog the building is created with the various selected settings and in most cases starts you in Draw block mode so you can start adding geometry straight away. If you are not ready to do this simply press the <Esc> key or right click and select Cancel.

See also the Starting a new project tutorial

Including Multiple Buildings on the Site

You can add as many buildings to a site as you like, however there are some considerations to bear in mind when more than one building are to be included on a site. These are listed below.

1. You can obtain snaps from other buildings when moving or copying buildings at site level, however it is important to be aware that buildings do not share adjacencies with each other. In other words, you may have positioned Building A so that one of its façades is adjacent to the façade of a neighbouring building, but that does mean that there will be an internal adjacency set up between the 2 buildings - the touching façades of the 2 buildings will be simulated using external surfaces.
2. Snap points from other buildings are not available at building level or below, so if you need to accurately align buildings with each other you may need to go to site level and move them into position.
3. Other buildings can be accounted for in EnergyPlus and Daylighting simulations by selecting the appropriate calculation options. For both EnergyPlus and Daylighting the other buildings can cast shadows and provide reflections, but they cannot be simulated within the same calculation.
4. Each building on the site adds to the memory overhead, especially if large amounts of result data are stored. So if buildings and/or their stored result sets are likely to be large, when planning your modelling, you may consider including each building in a separate model and simulating the shading/reflectance effects of neighbouring buildings using component blocks.