Carbon Designer 3D

What does Carbon Designer 3D do? 

Carbon Designer 3D is the newest iteration of our Carbon Designer tool and allows for quick baseline building creation with minimal knowledge about the project. Carbon Designer 3D enables you to quickly calculate an LCA and make variants on your design by changing between pre-defined building structures or relevant material choices. Carbon Designer 3D includes model visualisation allowing for a better understanding of the proportions of your design. Unlike Carbon Designer, Carbon Designer 3D works outside of a specific design but allows you to save your various design options to query.

The tool can be used in the early design stages but it can also support detailed options and creation. The modelled designs can be compared directly with each other or be saved as designs within your project for comparison with any other designs you have created.

Find out more and how to book a demonstration at https://www.oneclicklca.com/carbon-designer-3d/ 

Learn more about Carbon Designer 3D and its various use-cases in the One Click LCA Academy CD3D Mini Course.

How do you use Carbon Designer 3D?

If Carbon Designer 3D is included on your license, it will be available in almost every project. Some tools are not supported such as the Interior design carbon tool.

Step 1: Select Carbon Designer 3D in your project

Within your project, you will see the 'Carbon Designer 3D' button and can select the compatible tool you wish to use via the dropdown, as shown below:

Step 2: Create a design

Once you have opened Carbon Designer 3D you will have the option to either create a new design or compare up to four previously created designs. To create a new design, click 'Create a Design'

Step 3: Setting your project parameters

The first stage of design creation requires some general building information. We need to provide our design with a name, the reference building we wish to use, the Gross Floor Area (GFA) of our design and the calculation period. Once these have been filled, click 'Next'.

Secondly, we need to select the type of building we wish to create. Once selected, click 'Next' again.

Step 4: Define your scope

Next, we need to define the scope of our building. We should ensure that the correct selections have been made to include the parts of the building we are interested in, the number of above-ground floors (for a single storey this would be 1), any underground heated or unheated floors and the building's structural frame.

We can now include piling length (for visualisation) or additional elements for the foundations such as soil stabilisation.

Step 5: Calculate the geometry

In the final stage, we can set our building dimensions and see a visualisation of our design. Editable building dimensions can be adjusted and these impacts will be shown in the 3D model shown on the right-hand side. If you're unsure about what these adjustments will impact, click on the specific building dimension for a more detailed explanation

The 3D model can be used to provide a better understanding of the proportions of your design and its viewpoint can be adjusted by clicking on the model itself and dragging your mouse or scrolling to zoom. The transparency bar can be also be used to adjust the transparency of the model.

When you're ready to proceed, click 'Calculate areas'.

Step 6: Modify building dimensions and structure if needed

After clicking 'Calculate areas' the building structure can be edited if needed. Please note that any edits to the building structure areas are not taken into account by the 3D model. At this stage, the building dimensions can also be edited further, but you will need to recalculate the building areas for the changes to take effect. If the results look acceptable you can continue and click 'Submit'.

Step 7: Initial results

Once your design has been submitted, you will be returned to the Carbon Designer 3D main page, where you will be able to see the results for your model. The first design will be labelled as your baseline by default. The carbon footprint of the design can be broken down by element, material, classification, or show the total kg CO2e. Alongside this, the 3D model will still be shown, however, you can now visualise the total carbon share of different elements of your design by clicking 'Carbon view'.

The 'Carbon view' highlights the carbon impacts of the structure. The colors represent the emissions which are contribute in impact share to the total emissions of the design option. E.g. elements highlighted in Red contribute over 9% of emissions to the total emissions of the design option.

Step 8: Adjust building elements choices

You can change options used for each building element of your design, whether replacing the whole element with a new choice, for example changing the floor slab to a concrete slab assembly with bubble deck slab or setting specific quantities or percentages to be used for multiple options. To see these options, or to add new resources that you can use, click 'See unused resources' and adjust the quantity or percentage appropriately. New resources can be added from the dropdown at the end of the list of resources, such as private constructions.

Copying and comparing designs

To create further designs you can either make a copy of your baseline design or create a new design again, following the steps outlined above. To copy the design, click the three dots either in the building elements and materials section or in the 3D model as shown below:

Set the name of your design and click 'Copy'

Once the design has been copied you will see a comparison between both of these on the Carbon Designer main page. Changes can then be made to your design options by selecting the design you wish to change and adjusting the elements choices as before.

You can add up to four designs for comparison, either making copies of your baseline design and changing the resources manually, or creating a new design with a different structural frame option.

Any of the changes you make in any of these designs, from changing a building element to use steel instead of concrete or changing a particular section to use a different type of steel or concrete, are reflected immediately and are visible right away.

Saving your chosen design for your project

You can select one or all of your designs to be saved for your project. Click the three dots in the top right-hand corner of your 3D model and select 'Save design to project'.

You will then be asked if you wish to save this to an existing design or create a new design, whether you want to merge or overwrite existing data, and whether you want to convert other options in Carbon Designer 3D into designs within your project. Be sure to convert all the designs you wish to keep as you will lose any data once you have exited Carbon Designer 3D.

If you are looking for how to create Carbon Designer 3D Templates, please check the following article: Carbon Designer 3D Templates. 

Is Carbon Designer 3D available to me?

If you are interested in purchasing the Carbon Designer 3D please contact our Business Development Team.