A New Way of Thinking for the AEC Community: Upfront CFD Simulation

There is a good chance that where you are sitting right now there is some sort of environment control system-- fancy word for HVAC or simply a heating and cooling system. It is an ever expanding business. Architects and engineers are constantly being pushed to optimize the air flow distribution and temperature values. It can be a fairly sophisticated engineering problem involving humidity, comfort temps, solar radiation among other things. It's not getting any easier as there is more and more pressure to be green and maximize efficiency. It's not only being required from a budgetary perspective, new regulations are now requiring it. In the past, often the fix was to simply over size the unit, manually alter the ducts, and even more and more rigging to solve the problem.

One would think that a problem that involves air flow, ducts, dampers, diffusers, grills, filters, blowers, solar loading, ever increasing heat generating electronics- that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) would be a no brainer? Well, it's not really the case. In fact, up until recently it was used sporadically at best. Some outfits used it all the time, others rarely used it at all. But as with everything- times are changing. Now AEC firms are being required to provide simulation proof that the design will work and that the energy consumption meets certain requirements. This is sending folks scrambling to outsource the work, which is fairly costly. Others are investigating specific vertical very HVAC simulation tools. The problem is neither of these solutions really fits into their current process. Check out the variety of problems we are solving.


Historically, folks in this industry have used AutoCAD or Microstation. Their entire world has been born to think in 2D and expand into 3D. But with tools like Autodesk Revit making traction in this world, 3D is clearly a step in the right direction. There is really no benefit to going to a 3D MCAD CAD system, like Autodesk Inventor. But Revit now opens up an entire new world for this community. It is the launching point to really embracing CFD. Check out the videos below by CFdesign guru, Parker Wright. Parker has been fortunate to be right in the thick of things in this world. Working in the heart of NYC, he is hearing the evidence first hand right from the firms themselves. Check out his approach to solving the problem.

The below video shows the basic modeling inside Revit.

Here is setting up the CFD model leveraging the Revit geometry inside CFdesign.

Finally, reviewing the flow and thermal results in CFdesign.

I think we will be seeing more and more usage in this world. We are literally at the calm before the storm. The problems are only going to get bigger and happen more often. The good news is the technology and integration to solve the problem is growing even faster.