Timber construction and its benefits is moving into the BIM space for even more sustainable uses. A new BIM-integrated web application, called Carbon Fixers (which expands on its Offsite Wood plug-in for Revit), pre-calculates the carbon-benefit of choosing timber and other bio-sourced materials in early design.
Carbon Fixers lets you rapidly build a scenario using only basic architectural program information, such as the type, size, and number of stories in the building. For advanced users, preferences can be saved for firms with a regional expert dashboard, side-by-side comparisons and detailed assemblies.
The timber construction community itself is focusing on being a source of insight and education about how much material goes into building assemblies. This information is referenced to dynamic and open-sourced databases, with the first data set being Building Transparency’s EC3 tool, thanks to their open API and commitment to shared standards and knowledge.
“There are so many great teams working on the same goal of understanding carbon impacts these days. We decided the timber construction community needed to offer some shared infrastructure; there’s just so many stakeholders. Luckily the frameworks of open-sourced software are great at version control and transparency, and the data can be linked directly into downstream modeling tools now”, said Eli Gould, head of the project and US Representative for the Quebec Wood Export Bureau.
How can you access the app and start calculating your project's carbon emissions? First, go to www.carbonfixers.org and create your account. After registration and launch phase (or as a beta user already) you will be able to define a project by choosing an archetype structure and building parameters. Users can immediately see their design take shape with a 3D interactive model generator. Thanks to the open-sourced platform builders at Speckle Systems, multiple BIM toolkits will be able to publish archetypes eventually. A rapid data report showing the detailed carbon emissions associated with your design is available within seconds. Beta testing and validation experts are already tailoring outputs for client presentations or commitments like AIA 2030 and SE2050.
The non-profit and open-sourced goals of the project were shared by the Canadian offices of Brainpool.ai, the development team chosen to build the application. Brainpool is an Artificial Intelligence services company powered by a global network of 500 AI and ML experts, and their commitment to positive climate impact stood out during a scoping phase.
“CarbonFixer is a complex application because of the volume of data that has to be collected,” said Kasia Borowska, co-founder and managing director of artificial intelligence services company, Brainpool.ai. “Our team of back-end developers and ML experts collated the data quickly and built a robust proof-of-concept for the application. The project shows how environmental AI has a growing role in the construction industry, from proving how sustainability is feasible, through to automating building designs to find the most eco-efficient plans.”
The application is part of the larger Offsite Wood BIM initiative from QWEB. Users can download all timber and bio-sourced material families on the same website. The Offsite Wood BIM content creators are busy representing the growing industry with new western timber systems, and also testing integrated workflows with more advanced downstream tools, especially other open-sourced options in development like TallyCAT.
“The collaborative process going on now between timber experts, architectural studios, and the transparency data field is inspiring to all of us, and there is more to come throughout the fall. If you have a project case study, validation questions, or a compatible toolkit in development, we would love to hear from you!” added Gould.
Want to learn more about Carbon Fixers or begin your carbon calculation now? Find out more by visiting the website.