New York CitY College of teChNologYthe CitY UNiversitY of New York

EcotEct tips

ArchitEcturAl tEchnology dEpArtmEntwritten by nicole seekely

revised April 20, 2010 3:48 pm

notes:

page 2 of 11

EcotEct tips

crEating a shadE:select a surface to add a win-dow to. then hit the insert key. A pop-up menu will show with four different child objects.

select window. you can adjust the size and offset. it places it in the center by default.

notes:

page 3 of 11

EcotEct tips

crEating a shadE:once the window is created. go to calculate - shading de-sign Wizard.

step 1 - generate optimised shading device

step 2 - if you have your win-dow selected, click next

step 3 - select the time range you would like the object to be shaded.

step 4 - 3. optimised for se-lected dates

step 5 - oK

notes:

page 4 of 11

EcotEct tips

crEating a shadE:to make sure you shading de-vice works, select the wall with the window on it. go to modify - Assign As - shaded surface. you can then cycle through times and dates to make sure it is shaded.

notes:

page 5 of 11

EcotEct tips

crEating a shadE:By going through the wizard again, you can experiment with different dates and shad-ing types.

notes: For many of these settings to be visible, make sure you are in the Visualize tab, not 3d Editor.

page 6 of 11

EcotEct tips

Visualization sEttingsunder the Visualization set-tings, you can adjust how the lines on your model appear.

here sketchy lines has been turned on, and Extend line Ends is on. you can change the color of the lines by chang-ing the foreground color.

notes: For many of these settings to be visible, make sure you are in the Visualize tab, not 3d Editor.

page 7 of 11

EcotEct tips

Visualization sEttingsunder the Visualization set-tings, you can cut away a sec-tion of your geometry.

check cut Away section and adjust the axis as needed.

notes:

page 8 of 11

EcotEct tips

WEathEr toolEcotect has a weather tool that can help you with initial building orientation as well as provide you with basic tabular data for a given location.

to view the best orientation for a building, first open the weather tool.

select your location.

click on Best orientation un-der the solar position menu. this will pop up the optimum orientation menu. you want to select the three hottest months and three coldest months of the area and click oK.

notes:

page 9 of 11

EcotEct tips

WEathEr toolthe weather tool will calculate the best orientation for a verti-cal surface so that it reeives the most incident radiation during the cold months, and the least during the hot months.

the tool does not take into ac-count surroundings such as other buildings, so this may only be useful as a preliminary assessment.

notes: to edit these graphs and any other Ecotect/Weather tool file, click on the camera that is on the bottom right or left of the screen. select copy as metafile. this will put on your clipboard a vector file. then open up illustrator and paste.

page 10 of 11

EcotEct tips

WEathEr toolyou can also use the weather tool to analyze the advantages of passive design techniques.

Just go to View - passive de-sign Analysis.

select your hours of operation and click oK.

the program will generate a series of graphs showing the Before and After effects of passive strategies.

notes: to edit these graphs and any other Ecotect/Weather tool file, click on the camera that is on the bottom right or left of the screen. select copy as metafile. this will put on your clipboard a vector file. then open up illustrator and paste.

page 11 of 11

EcotEct tips

WEathEr toolyou can edit in illustrator a vec-tor file that you’ve copied from the Weather tool or Ecotect. this makes it easy to format data so it can fit into a presen-tation.