What was new in 2019?

18th December 2019 - One Click LCA Revit plugin update (All Revit users)

1. This version of the plugin introduces a fix that affected Revit 2019 usability with some models. This is corrected in Revit 2019.2.2. Updating Dynamo is also recommended. This Revit bug can prevent models from being read, it is a bug in Revit (Not related to the One Click LCA plugin).
2. This version of the plugin makes sure Revit does not crash the One Click LCA plugin.

15th December 2019 - December release notes (All users)

Summary of release highlights - all versions

1. Error corrections in materials thickness handling and Carbon Designer facades
2. New detailed comparison graph is added to the end of project main page
3. New results sidebar allows a sneak peek at results from data input forms
4. Materials input forms now have enabled delete multiple by dragging the area and right mouse click and Delete
5. Data searchability improvements for long lists and identifying plant-specific data
6. Improved materials manufacturing localization method v2 is released as a beta
7. General improvements, user interface enhancements, and Italian language support
8. Database: 18427 new datasets since the last release

Release highlights for Business and Expert licenses

1. New Revit plugin with Revit 2020 support, benchmarking and improvements (Business)
2. Integration with Autocase for Triple Bottom line analyses (North American users)
3. Cost and carbon optimal materials specifier (Expert license)
4. Private data improvements (Expert license / all French users for EPD generators)
5. Fully revamped Green materials benchmark feature (Expert license)
6. New user-adjustable End of Life model v2 beta for selected tools (Expert license)

Tool specific updates

1. Carbon Designer improvements and support for default values for calculation methods
2. Corporate reporting improvements: hiding reporting periods and new visualizations

Read the release notes in full here.

 

8th November 2019 - One Click LCA Revit plugin update and support for Autodesk Revit 2020 version

Refreshed One Click LCA plugin for Autodesk Revit is now available. The new plugin delivers several important and requested improvements.

1. Support for Autodesk Revit 2020.
2. Direct access to Quick LCA on the main ribbon. This allows you to push all data to the One Click LCA cloud and allow parsing and processing data in the cloud environment.
3. Benchmark your project to any of the regional and building type-specific Carbon Heroes Benchmarks and compare your project's carbon intensity and see the impact of your changes inside Revit.
4. Several user interface clarifications and improvements.

The new plugin is currently in beta version and is available in our Customer Support center.

 

14th October 2019 - October release notes (All users)

This release includes several smaller updates relevant for all users and also 

1. Improved bad mapping protection for data import 
2. Carbon Designer update for Expert license users
3. Update to the Circular economy tool

Read the release notes in full here.

 

20th September 2019 - September release notes (All users)

This release improves result readability and visualization and includes the below updates.

1. All licenses: Swedish language, hiding designs, and 10+ user-requested features & updates
2. Business: improved Copy & Merge and import for infrastructure projects is streamlined 
3. Expert: Materials Specifier, a beta of manufacturing localization v2 and calculation details 
4. Carbon Designer: UK/Ireland and Finland regions now available, several improvements
5. Over 600 new materials datapoints since August

Read the release notes in full here.

 

20th August 2019 - New early phase carbon model for UK (UK users)

Carbon Designer now has a UK region, including also building services to simplify BREEAM UK optioneering. The new early phase building model for the UK is compliant with Current Part L requirements (2013 with 2016 amendments) and allows easy compliance with BREEAM UK Mat 01’s Option appraisal for superstructure during Concept Design and supports also optioneering in the Technical Design phase. The model includes a range of external wall options that are Part L compliant, as well as elements that can be used for the Substructure and hard landscaping options appraisal credit. This can be used by all users who have the Carbon Designer add-on and are using either the 'RICS carbon assessment' tool or the 'LCA for BREEAM UK' tool.  

 

26th June 2019 - Default data for material costs for life-cycle costing revamped (all LCC tool users with automated cost data option)

The entire material cost database has been reviewed and revamped. This has corrected several cost anomalies and made the rest of the costs more reflective of market conditions in different regions. All material unit costs and all material installation labour rates have been reviewed and where required, corrected. Cost data has been also updated to reflect some newly introduced material types, including tile adhesives, textiles, (etc). Kindly note that systems and installations do not have unit costs as of today.

 

Also, the cost basis for products that are almost exclusively expressed in m2 (sqft) has been rebased to those units. This concerns windows, doors, flooring and roofing materials. The unit basis for most other materials remains the same. 

 

If you have used the LCC tool previously, all costs generated to date have been saved as final and will not update automatically. This ensures no data changes occur in your existing projects. If you wish to apply the new cost to your project, you need to input or import the same quantities again to the project.

 

In addition, we have introduced a regional cost profile for users who do not wish to include labour/installation costs to their LCC. This region is available in LCC parameters under project country/region as Material costs only, euro-based. Choosing this region will set automatically labour costs to zero, thus having pure material costs considered for LCC).

 

9th June 2019 - June 2019 Release notes (All users)

This release delivers the following improvements:

- Six new powerful features for Business and Expert license users launched

- 500 new datasets added (all material types, Europe and North America) and SAP 10 compliant energy profiles for the UK

- Support for Net Zero projects with vegetation carbon uptake and carbonisation modeling

- Three ASHRAE climate zone-specific regions for North America baseline buildings released in Carbon Designer: Canada, Southern United States and Northern United States

New tools available:

- New ‘LCA for VERDE’ tool for Spain for VERDE Omega certification

- New ‘NS 3454 Lifecycle Costs for Construction tool’ for Norway

- New Infrastructure carbon as an add-on to building LCA licenses (PAS 2080, Envision)

- New Infrastructure LCA as an add-on to building LCA licenses (CEEQUAL, HS2)

Read the release notes in full here.

4th May 2019 - BREEAM Int’l/ES/NOR/SE now supports Man 03 Responsible construction practices credit (BREEAM Int'l users)

The 'LCA for BREEAM Int’l/ES/NOR/SE' tool has been updated and now included impacts relevant for 'Man 03 Responsible construction practices; Monitoring of construction site impacts' credits. These include construction site energy and water use as well as transportation distance and fuel use. Results can be found under the result tables in an expandable section 'Man 03 Site impacts (energy, water, transportation monitoring)'

 

29th April 2019 - April 2019 release notes (minor release)

This release is predominantly focused on Carbon Designer improvements. These improve functionality and prepare upcoming releases of regional baselines for the United States, Canada and Finland and enable inclusion of building services. We also released 49 generic scenarios for different types of building services like HVAC, and enabled using Sankey diagrams (Expert license).

Read the release notes in full here.

 

18th April 2019 - Split & Change feature now included in the Starter pack 

The Split & Change feature is now available for all Starter license users.

 

9th April 2019 - New Carbon Heroes benchmarks available 

The Carbon Heroes benchmarks have been updated based on the latest available data as of Q1 2019. The new data better represents the geographical conditions as well as the building types. All the new benchmarks are marked as "CH Q1 2019". The change might affect the relative performance of projects.

 

26th March 2019 - Norwegian and European reference buildings updated to new version 2019.1

The Norwegian and European reference buildings have been updated to new version 2019.1, which includes many improvements and fixes. The full details on all changes can be read here (Full details). This will not affect data already saved to the Building materials input form but will update the saved designs in Carbon Designer.

The changes will on the average, increase the Construction Materials (A1-A3) impacts by 7-8 % for all building types.

 

Please note: Reopening and saving previously created Carbon Designer model will update it to the new version. Do not save it again if you do not wish to update the reference to the latest version

 

21st March 2019 - March 2019 software update (All users)

In this release, we focused on improving the performance and now our data input pages load significantly faster. There were many new features and improvements aiming to improve user productivity including, for instance, advanced LCA completeness and plausibility checker, more advanced BIM import settings and more. We also launched a new tool that allows quantifying building circularity impacts and visualizes them.

Read the release notes in full here.

25th February 2019  - Energie carbone RSEE validation issue solved (French users)

The issue of RSEE file not validating after v1.1.0.3 update has been solved. This affected buildings with multiple zones in the same building. Now data input forms have a question "Zone de bâtiment" where the user must assign the inputs in the same zones as in RSET file. By default, all inputs are assigned to Zone 1. 

 

29th January 2019 - PAS 2080 and Infrastructure LCA tool updates to simplify results and inputs (European infra users) 

There are minor improvements to the Infrastructure LCA tool that will affect the results page and data input forms. 

 

The categories "A1-A3 Construction materials" and "A1-A3b Construction materials" will be shown as a single expandable category "A1-A3 Product stage". If you want to see the breakdown click on the + symbol. After this change, the "A1-A3 Product stage" will appear empty before the results are recalculated but you can expand the category to see the previous results. The totals row of the tool will also remain unchanged.

 

Where possible we are adding additional help texts indicating to which category certain inputs are calculated towards. This will be indicated by appending the category to the section or question name.

 

28th January 2019 - PAS 2080 tool and HS2 result report labelling update (UK Infra users)

Result report structure is now fully aligned with PAS 2080 structure. The labels are identical with ones used in PAS 2080, and access to details of stages with multiple constituents can be accessed with the "+" symbol to see sub-constituents for A1-A3 Product stage, A5 Construction/installation process and B4-B5 Material replacement and refurbishment.

 

Please note that at first, before you have resaved or recalculated your data, the sum row for A1-A3 Product stage will remain empty. The data is however intact, as it is recorded in the constituent rows as before that are visible if you expand the stage A1-A3.

 

25th January 2019 - New ITB EPDs added, 88 products from Poland and region (Central European users)

All new EPDs from the ITB program are added to the One Click LCA database. This covers products for example in cement, coated glass, ETICS (External Thermal Insulation Composite System), glass wool, laminated flooring, natural stone, other insulation, partitioning systems, regular glass, gypsum plasterboard, reinforcement steel, rock wool, sandwich panels and structural steel. 

 

23rd January 2019 - New Norwegian electricity scenarios added to Carbon Designer and Site impacts tools (NS 3720 users)

New NS 3720 relevant electricity scenarios are now available. All the new scenarios follow the below methodology

- The average period is now the average of 2014-2016 years for which final statistics are available. The data for this period are based on the International Energy Agency.

- Calculation inventories, system models and characterisation factors all comply with the EN 15804+A1 and NS 3720 methodologies. The upstream database is Ecoinvent 3.3.

- All calculation is fully life-cycle based and includes transmission losses, energy conversion efficiency for fuel-based energy production and share of CHP systems. Hydropower is calculated as existing hydropower.

- Assumptions for the year 2050 are taken from the NS 3720 Annex A, including the assumption for widespread use of Carbon Capture and Storage in the year 2050. This is not a statement of the plausibility of that scenario.

 

On average, the revised scenarios reduce the carbon impact of the electricity in particular for the 60 year periods. 

 

The new data points are:

- Electricity, Norway, 3-year average 2014-2016 (IEA) 

- Electricity, Norway, 60 years forecasted average (IEA/NS3720 energy mix, projection from 2014-2016 average)

- Electricity, EU28 + Norway, 3-year average 2014-2016 (IEA)

- Electricity, EU28 + Norway, 60 years forecasted average (IEA/NS3720 energy mix, projection from 2014-2016 average)

 

The new data points are also included in Carbon Designer and Site Impact tools where they replace the earlier datapoints.

 

21st January 2019 - Major Revit plugin update in One Click LCA (Revit integration users)

One Click LCA newest Revit plug-in (version 2.1) key improvements: 

• Revit 2019 supported (and all versions from 2016 upwards),
  
• Ability choose specific phases and linked models,
  
• Significantly improved materials mapping,
  
• Faster loading time and better usability, and
  
• Advanced results analysis (with Carbon data/3D for BIM) 
  

Full article about the update can be found here. 

Download the new plug-in here.

 

15th January 2019 - One Click LCA extension (beta) for IDA ICE 4.8 SP1.0 available (IDA ICE users)

One Click LCA extension beta for IDA ICE 4.8 SP1.0 is now available. This requires that the IDA ICE 4.8 be updated with the service pack 1.0, and a Business or Expert subscription to One Click LCA.

 

To use the extension, download and install the One Click LCA extension for IDA ICE from One Click LCA Support Center.

 

14th January 2019 - BREEAM UK NC 2018 benchmark comparison credit estimator (BREEAM UK users)

The 'LCA for BREEAM UK IMPACT-compliant' tool has been updated and now includes the estimated BREEAM benchmark comparison credits for offices, industrial and retail buildings for BREEAM UK NC 2018 Mat 01. This allows having an initial quick estimate for the credits. The section is added at the top of the IMPACT-compliant tool.