CityEngine Environment Reporting and Metrics

[DanielRich]

Hello,

I have a question pertaining to the Redlands Redevelopment 2014 Tutorial. I am currently working with the 3D City Design Rules folder which contains the Environment Reporting.cga, Environment Settings.cga and the Building Construction.cga Rules. When Building Construction.cga is applied to a footprint it is very easy to generate a building. Once the building is generated a report is issued in the inspector that lists various attributes such as Building Performance Baseline (water, energy and waste) and Building Performance Target for the same categories.

Since this rule is very descriptive and complete I attempted to modify the Environment Reporting.cga, Environment Settings.cga, and Building Construction.cga rules to fit the climate model of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania instead of Redlands, California. However, when I make modifications to Environment Settings.cga and Environment Reporting.cga (after inserting the correct data for Solar Intensity, Rainfall Intensity, etc.) I cannot find any difference between the reporting metrics for Redlands vs. Philadelphia. They appear to be identical regardless of what is submitted in the Environment Settings.cga and Environment Reporting.cga rule. I am unsure if I am doing something wrong or if the reporting metrics listed in the inspector are derived from somewhere else.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

[Anonymous User]

Daniel,

There are numerous things that could be happening here. If you let me know the name of a specific report, I can look into where it comes from. Also, if you zip your "3D Design..." rules folder, and attach it here, I could look directly.

Chris

[DanielRich]

I think we are trying to understand all of the generic reports from the Building Construction.cga rule. Particularly those that are water, energy, and waste. We intend to try and report on as much data as possible because we are going to define the metrics of buildings at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (Both existing and proposed). Attached is my zip of the original rules and the modified ones I made specifically for the Philadelphia Navy Yard. I have done some modification to the Environment Settings.cga rule and the Environment Reporting.cga rule. Another thing we will have to consider later on is the conversion from meters to feet units. Thanks. (Below is the link where I am storing the zip folder of rules on my google drive.)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1jH-F2MB0ceR0R1YkFYTTZEZ28&authuser=0

[Anonymous User]

Dan,

The file containing the energy baselines is Zoning Settings, which you would want to adjust for your region or city. This is because these settings are based on zoning. So if you have a building with retail on the bottom and residential on top, those each would use different amounts of resources due to the different uses. That is the file you need to adjust. I think Environment settings/reports is only for Rainfall/pervious surface calculations. They are in the Environment file, because it is based on factors unrelated to Zoning (in a simplified world that is).

Thanks and have fun with the Navy Yard project!

Chris

[DanielRich]

Chris,

I found what I needed in the zoning settings.cga rule. There was even a note written in the code that mentioned that those base metric numbers have to be changed in order for reporting to be accurate at a new location. I've relayed it to the team and we'll go from there. Thank you!