Benefits of LCADesign Include:

• Automated environmental assessment direct from 3D CAD drawings
• Choice of environmental impact and performance measures
• Detailed design evaluation
• Comparative ratings of environmental impacts of alternatives at all levels of design analysis
• Comprehensive graphical and tabular outputs

LCADesign has been specifically designed to:

• Drive innovative and eco-efficient building design through an automated environmental impact assessment design tool for building design professionals
• Audit and assess current and future building codes and standards
• Harmonise with simpler checklist and other environmental rating tools
• Provide a method for environmentally conscious design which aligns with the International Standards Organisation framework for assessment of building environmental performance

Environmental Profiles

Buildings consume significant amounts of resources including water and energy, and contribute to pollution of our air, water and soil, but remain an essential part of the world we live in. The ability to readily assess their impact and to design alternatives to reduce that impact is the core purpose of LCADesign. Assesment measures include a range of environmental impacts as defined through international standards, covering such topics as:

• Resource depletion
• Air pollution
• Water pollution
• Solid waste
• EconomicsLife Cycle Assessment
• Human impact

Life Cycle Assesment

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product by:

• Compiling an inventory of relevant
  inputs and outputs of a product system
• Evaluating potential environmental impacts of those inputs and outputs
• Interpreting the results of the inventory and impact assessment in relation to the objectives of the study (ISO 14043 ?#8364;“ 2000).

For buildings, the inventory includes resource acquisition, transport, manufacture, construction, maintenance, final demolition, removal processes and recyclability of building products.

Environmental Assessment

LCADesign is fully automated from the completion of the 3D CAD drawing of a building to viewing of calculated environmental impacts resulting from building construction. The automated take-off provides quantities of all building components made of products such as concrete, steel and timber.This construction information is combined with the life cycle inventory to estimate key internationally recognised environmental indicators.

Advances in LCADesign

The LCADesign concept is a significant advancement on current tools in that the LCADesign approach:

• Obtains building data direct from CAD
• Is objective rather than subjective assessment
• Includes economic and environmental impacts
• Provides a variety of performance measures
• Can compare full life cycle performance of components
• Provides repeatable evidence based environmental reports
• Makes weighting of environmental impacts transparent to the user
• Evaluates impacts at a detailed product specific level
• Quantitatively computes absolute values rather than relative values
• Is aimed at compliance for standards, codes and performance based tests
• Calculates totals from building components not just the whole building
• Assesses a building using comprehensive databases of environmental impact of building components and materials
• Is applicable to evaluation at both sketch design and detailed design stages
• Facilitates assessment of tradeoffs

3D CAD and IFC Technology

Modern 3D, object-oriented CAD files contain a wealth of building information. LCADesign accesses this detail through utilising Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) - the new international standard file format for defining architectural and constructional CAD graphic data as 3D real-world objects - allowing interrogation of intelligent objects by construction professionals.

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Life Cycle Inventory Database

The life cycle inventory database includes details of resource consumption and environmental emissions generated during the manufacture of building materials, including embodied pollution and water as well as energy.

The individual environmental indicators are nested under three major categories of impact: resource depletion, degradation of the physical environment, and harm to human population. LCADesign has the capability to drill down into the source of environmental impacts by material category, individual material, building assembly or component.