Environmental Design Commons^™

Teaching Sustainable Design Using Bim And Project-Based Energy Simulations, Zhigang Shen, Wayne Jensen, Tim Wentz, Bruce Fischer

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The cross-disciplinary nature of energy-efficient building design has created many challenges for architecture, engineering and construction instructors. One of the technical challenges in teaching sustainable building design is enabling students to quantitatively understand how different building designs affect a building’s energy performance. Concept based instructional methods fall short in evaluating the impact of different design choices on a buildings’ energy consumption. Building Information Modeling (BIM) with energy performance software provides a feasible tool to evaluate building design parameters. One notable advantage of this tool is its ability to couple 3D visualization of the structure with energy performance analysis without requiring …