Export Data

You can export data from DesignBuilder screens:

• Edit Screen - exports a non-rendered 3-D image of the building. Alternatively a 3-D DXF file can be exported.
• Visualisation Screen - exports a rendered 3-D image of the building optionally including shading and antialiasing..
• Heating and Cooling Design Screens - exports design data (graphical, tabular, spreadsheet).
• Simulation Screen - exports simulation data (graphical, tabular, spreadsheet).

You can export to a range of destinations (depending on the nature of the data):

• File - store output in a file which can be imported into your documents/e-mails.
• Printer - sends output directly to the printer.
• Clipboard - copy the data to the clipboard for pasting into another application such as Word, Excel or email.
• Report topic - store the data as a report topic which can later be included as a page in a report by using the Compile report option.

Tip: the default setting for the destination can be set on the Dialogs tab of the Program options dialog.

Export format options depend on the nature of the data. The full range of options is:

• Bitmap - best bitmap based output quality but very large file sizes.
• PNG - better quality compression than JPEG but sometimes have larger file sizes.
• TIFF - best bitmap based output quality but very large file sizes.
• GIF - good compression but black and white only.
• JPEG - recommended for 3-D images of the model because of its good quality combined with small file sizes.
• DXF - generate 3-D DXF data of the model - only available from Edit and Visualisation Screens. The 3-D DXF file generated by DesignBuilder is suitable for reading into other CAD software. Two options are available:
• 1-Whole model with details which includes all of the details of the model as seen on the Visualisation tab, and,
• 2-Zones which generates the internal surfaces as used in simulations and other energy calculations.
• Windows metafile - results graphs only - scalable so graphs can be resized without losing quality.
• CSV spreadsheet - grid results and library data only. Note that grid results saved in csv format can be loaded to Results Viewer for further analysis.
• Text - reports only.

See also the Exporting Data and Compiling Results Tutorial

Tip: To improve the image resolution we recommend using a high resolution monitor.