IES launches two new green design tools

Boston– November 10, 2008 –   Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) recently released two new suites of integrated sustainable analysis tools – the Architectural Suite and the Architectural Suite Plus. These two new offerings provide architects with early-stage environmental design assistance in a variety of categories, including energy consumption, carbon emissions, LEED Daylighting, solar shading and artificial lighting, enabling them to perform customized analysis for each project.

 The environmental analysis tools are integrated around a central 3D model that can connect directly with Google SketchUp™, Autodesk® Revit® and with other 3D design tools via gbXML. Utilizing these suites, architects can quickly and easily incorporate environmental performance analysis into their design workflow without rebuilding geometry.  Multiple design iterations can rapidly be assessed to help maximize the environmental performance of the final design.

 “These two suites increase the architect’s ability to delve deeper into environmental analysis at the earliest design stages, where the most impact can be made,” said Dr. Don McLean, founder and managing director of IES. “By bundling the features of IES’ core applications with our VE-Toolkits, architects will have access to the most relevant tools to help them ‘green’ their designs.” 

 The IES Architectural Suite and Architectural Suite Plus provide access to IES’ most powerful environmental analysis tools. Included in both bundles are IES’ Sustainability Toolkit, Advanced Daylight Analysis, Artificial Lighting Design and Advanced Solar Analysis, as well as comprehensive training sessions to get users up to speed quickly.

The Sustainability Toolkit enables architects to perform common sustainable design analysis in a single click including assessments of energy efficiency, carbon footprint, 2030 Challenge and LEED daylight requirements, as well as thermal comfort and loads information. The Advanced Daylight, Lighting Design and Solar Analysis modules provide a more detailed assessment of daylight and solar shading strategies such as light pipes, light wells, light shelves, semi-transparent glazing and brise soleil.  Additionally, tools to inform and enable detailed design of artificial lighting layouts are included, as well as the ability to perform advanced visualization and calculation of light/solar penetration and photo-realistic 3D rendering using ray-tracing.

Architectural Suite Plus includes Advanced Energy Analysis using ApacheSim, IES’s dynamic thermal simulation engine. Assessments for temperature, comfort, humidity and internal loads can be performed and results can be displayed in a 3D model including room colorcoding and wind roses. This tool also gauges energy, carbon and 2030 Challenge assessments and is ASHRAE 140 compliant.  Data from the Advanced Daylight, Lighting Design and Solar modules can be shared with ApacheSim for thorough energy simulation.

IES will be demonstrating both Architectural suites at its booth, #1447 at Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Boston next week, along with seminars from IES executives and partners.  Additionally, IES will also be demonstrating an enhanced version of its SketchUp plug-in at Greenbuild. Following user feedback, the IES VE plug-in will now recognize SketchUp components and groups and allow them to be set as either areas for analysis, shading devices or be excluded.

About Integrated Environmental Solutions 

Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) Ltd. is an innovative company at the forefront of the use and development of powerful software simulation tools which help architects, engineers, facilities managers, and all those involved in the development and management of buildings design and maintain truly sustainable properties.  IES was established in June 1994 and is headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, with offices in Dublin, Eire; Boston and San Francisco, USA and Melbourne, Australia. IES’s services and products aid significantly in the provision of healthier and more energy efficient built environments. For additional information, please visit www.iesve.com