Archicad and CYPE connected: MEP services design and energy assessment

The second session in a series of three devoted to the connection between Archicad and the CYPE applications. The thread here is building services and energy assessment: how the architectural model leaves Archicad, what the CYPE tools do with it and how that information returns to the project to be coordinated. The speakers are Joana Alsasua, of SIMBIM, and Pablo Gilabert and Antonio González, of CYPE Ingenieros. The first part takes place in Archicad. A distinction is drawn between modelling the networks inside the program itself with MEP Modeler, a modelling tool and not a calculation tool, and the case the session deals with: working with a consultant who designs and calculates the building services in another application. The starting model, an office building, arrives already filtered, with the envelope, the partitions and the zones, and is exported to IFC with a translator also prepared for the energy assessment, publishing a view instead of a save as and checking the file in a viewer before sending it. The second part is delivered by the CYPE team on BIMserver.center, and shows two routes. The first is CYPECAD MEP, which imports the IFC directly and uses a wizard to guide the assignment of floor slabs, walls, partitions, façades and openings. The second splits the work between specialist programs: the IFC is uploaded to the platform with IFC Uploader, a collaborator is invited with a given role, and each application reads from that project only what it needs. On CYPETHERM, the session covers the mapping of the construction elements and saving it to a library, the definition of the climate, the assumptions and the zones, and the calculation of thermal loads. The speakers point out the limits of IFC for a fine-grained thermal analysis, in particular the absence of an explicit expression of the edges of the spaces, and mention a separate tool for generating the analytical model. What has been calculated is returned to the platform with its attachments, and the assigned role decides whether those files go straight in or require approval. The closing section returns to Archicad: the building services IFC is placed as a hotlinked module, that is, as a non-editable reference, and clash detection is run on it by groups and criteria, with the issue exportable in BCF. The question session covers IFC 2x3 versus IFC 4, the export of zones as IFC Space, the generation of drawings from the model received and, at the time of the recording, the absence of a direct add-on between CYPE and Archicad.