Visualization of building energy performance in building information models

Abstract

this paper presents the results of research and development of Building Energy Simulation (BES) visualization methods. In this effort the authors used Building Information Modeling (BIM) Authoring tools’ Application Programming Interface (API) to visualize BES results in BIM. We also used an external database to store and manage the object-based simulation results from a BES tool. Based on these methods, we created a prototype: Building Energy Performance Visualization (BEPV), which translates information from the result database to the Energy Performance Indicator (EPI) parameter in BIM. using the prototype, when BIM models are created for building design, the building energy performance can be expressed visually as color-coding on the BIM, allowing users to see energy flows directly. the developed prototype lets architects use BIM as a common user interface for building design and performance visualization, and may improve their designs in early stages.