Geometry - Residential
This 90-minute course focuses on mastering residential building geometry and specification within the Better Buildings application. Designed for professionals, it covers essential skills from project setup to advanced modelling techniques.
Key Course Content:
The course begins by introducing the chosen demonstration model, a two-story house with varied roof systems, a garage, and common residential spaces. Participants will learn how to initialise a project, defining its geographic location, number of stories, and floor-to-floor heights. The session emphasises selecting 'designer mode' to focus solely on geometry, bypassing specific code workflows for initial setup.
A core component covers drawing setup and calibration. Participants will learn to create new drawings for each level, import and calibrate architectural PDF/PNG underlays using a known dimension (e.g., a window width), and precisely align multi-level drawings using common origin points to ensure vertical stacking accuracy.
The course then delves into detailed zone modelling, demonstrating how to accurately draw and edit thermal zones for various spaces (e.g., garage, bathroom, hallway, living, kitchen). It covers techniques for snapping nodes, adjusting zones for precise dimensions, and splitting combined zones (e.g., kitchen/living) into separate thermal areas.
A significant portion focuses on elemental specification and tagging. Participants will learn the crucial role of 'tagging' to efficiently group similar windows and doors, assign their correct geometric dimensions (width, height, sill height), and then apply corresponding thermal performance specifications (U-values, SHGCs) consistently across multiple elements. The session also covers modelling and specifying internal elements like 'air walls' for connecting spaces and internal doors for airflow networks, along with external elements like 'shading' (e.g., adjacent buildings, complex tree shapes) and 'solar PV arrays' on roofs.
Finally, the course addresses roof system modelling, including pitched (warm and cold roof systems) and flat roofs, demonstrating how to define pitches, eaves, and insulation lines. It highlights common geometric errors (e.g., conflicts when projecting ceilings, splitting windows for roof adjacencies) and provides troubleshooting methods. The session concludes by demonstrating how to assign 'space types' (e.g., H1 housing) to zones for appropriate default settings, ensuring the model is fully prepared for detailed energy and daylighting simulations in other workflows.
Learning Outcomes:
Participants will gain a solid foundation in using Better Buildings to efficiently create, specify, and manage detailed residential building geometry, preparing them for advanced energy and daylighting simulations.
Course Completion:
A Certificate of Completion will be awarded upon achieving an 80% pass mark on the final quiz.
Support Material:
The course uses a residential development example, specifically the "Telopea House" in Sydney.
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