Effort and expressiveness in simulation-based buildingperformance evaluation

This paper describes a case study to estimate the time and effort needed by novice designers to computationally evaluate the performance of building designs. A group of senior architecture students participated in the study, learning and using a software application to assess the energy performance of six project submissions for a school building design competition. The outcome of this study (time investment ranges for various components of the modeling activity) was evaluated and further extrapolated to estimate the effort needed for a more comprehensive computational assessment of the environmental performance of these designs.