Release notes June 2019

Release notes June 2019

Highlights

This release delivers the following improvements:
  1. Six new powerful features for Business and Expert license users launched
  2. 500 new datasets added (all material types, Europe and North America) and SAP 10 compliant energy profiles for UK
  3. Support for Net Zero projects with vegetation carbon uptake and carbonisation modeling
  4. 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:
  1. New ‘LCA for VERDE’ tool for Spain for VERDE certification
  2. New ‘NS 3454 Lifecycle Costs for Construction tool’ for Norway
  3. New Infrastructure carbon as add-on to building LCA licenses (PAS 2080, Envision)
  4. New Infrastructure LCA as add-on to building LCA licenses (CEEQUAL, HS2) 

New features summary

Business license users get access to the following new features:
  1. Compare answers: allows comparing inputs between designs and copying them
  2. Allow adding any read only user: allows having e.g. your client as read only user
  3. Copy data from your & colleagues projects: allows using another project as baseline
Expert license users get access to the following new features:

  1. Sankey diagrams and bubble charts: new ways to visualize impacts of materials
  2. Send me data from BIM: allows you to get receive materials data exported from BIM tools with One Click LCA plugins from users who do not have One Click LCA licenses
  3. Carbon data / 3D for BIM: this previous add-on is now included in Expert licenses

Carbon Designer improvements

Several new pre-calculation adjustment capabilities have been added:
  1. Foundation type and depth can be chosen before calculating baseline carbon
  2. Building services beta has been enabled in Carbon Designer 
  3. Several new constructions for North America regions have been added
  4. Carbon Designer allows now splitting load bearing (structural) internal walls from others. This is mostly relevant for LEED v4 LCA, and is applied by default for US and Canada only.
  5. Carbon Designer can also calculate Life-Cycle Cost at the same time (with your cost data, and if you have license for a LCC tool)
  6. You can edit the building dimensions on the start screen of Carbon Designer after the areas have been calculated. This will require recalculating the resulting areas before it takes effect.


Carbon Designer has also several new post-calculation adjustment capabilities: 
  1. You can change energy scenario in Carbon Designer after (if it is enabled in region)
  2. Set as baseline feature sets the modified version as the new baseline.
  3. Carbon Designer graph can be regrouped based on elements or total result
  4. New constructions have been added for North American regions
  5. The calculation page also has Assumptions feature to show basic info for assumptions used

New features in all packages

Every save reports the change in the principal result (e.g. carbon impacts) 

Each time a design is saved there will be a notification displaying the change in the design, e.g. GWP reduced/increased by X kg CO2e. This notification is displayed as part of save successful message.

Pie charts include now also text labels 

The LCA stages next to the pie chart have been modified to allow for greater readability. The stages have been modified from e.g.’ A1-A3 - 79%’ to ‘A1-A3 Materials – 79%’.

One Click LCA generic materials now have illustrative images under their data cards

Our own generic material profiles now have illustrative photos attached to the data cards. These are intended to help understanding what the data-point represents.

Organisation carbon price can be applied in the organisation profile, and is shown on results pages

If your organisation applies a carbon price, it can be set using the organisation profile. In all licenses linked to the organisation, the organisation carbon price is applied and shown on the result reports. In the ‘Life-Cycle Carbon – Global tool’ this is used for calculating cost of carbon by life-cycle phase. 

More hover-over helps added to the data input forms and results report

Hover-over helps have been added for the input forms and for the LCA stages and impact calculations on the results page. These provide you with useful help and background information.

New units available for IP unit system

New unit ‘gallon’ can now be used and is available in Imperial units where liters would be used in SI.
New unit ‘kBtu’ can now be used and is available in Imperial units where kWh would be used in SI.

Better overview of available tools and tools matching certification highlighted

Certification tools in the tool options page now have visible logos, and if you have chosen a certification when you create project, will be shown at the top of the list. 

Tools added to license after project creation

If there are more tools available in the license than used by the project, this is shown as a notification at the top of the main project page. The ‘Product options’ button is renamed to ‘Tools’, and ‘Help’ button made more visible. 


Business level license features

Compare answers available on input forms

Compare answers allows showing on any input form page in a project that has multiple designs (calculations) the answers given to another design. This allows for example comparing inputs between baseline and optimized design. You can also copy entries from the other design, in case you notice something is missing for example.

Allow adding any read only user to a project (e.g. your client)

The new license model supports read only users who do not require a license. Read only user must have a registered One Click LCA user account. They can not be upgraded to Modifier users.

Copy data from your & colleagues projects

This feature allows using previous inputs from your or your colleagues’ projects (as long as you both are assigned to same organisation) as a starting point for your new project. You can copy all inputs, or just inputs for one of the input forms. You need access rights to a project to copy data from it.


Expert level license features

Bubble charts introduced for very simple materials impacts overview

Bubble charts shows bubbles relative to life-cycle impacts of resource types and sub-types. Same type (e.g. concrete) has same colour, with different sub-types in different bubbles. Types can be disabled from the graph. The graph will also show utilities, if any were used for the project. The full data-set for the Bubble chart can also be downloaded in Excel format.


Sankey diagrams have been improved (initially released in April 2019 patch)

Sankey diagrams now show by default three levels. You can adjust the rendering and add resource sub-types to the rendering. The classification will automatically apply the national classification, for example RICS, MasterFormat, and so on, as long as that classification is applied to the input data. The full data set for the Sankey diagram can also be downloaded in Excel format.

Send me data from BIM

This feature allows a person having BIM tools and BIM data to send their material quantities using One Click LCA plugins to a One Click LCA Expert license user via One Click LCA Send me data from BIM feature. This avoids requiring licenses for both software from these users. Also, this avoids having to share the full BIM file (as only material quantities are sent).


Carbon data / 3D for BIM (requires licenses to additional software)

This feature allows a person having license to Revit to use Revit-specific data visualisation and downloading to Revit, as well as a person having either One Click LCA BIM Tool (an inexpensive BIM reader add-on) or Simplebim users to use the specific data visualisation and analysis in BIM model. Both rely on One Click LCA API. One Click LCA BIM Tool based version allows rendering carbon hotspots in 3D and colouring the BIM model according to carbon intensity or accumulation.


New data introduced – 500 new datapoints

Over 100 building systems datasets, including 50 generic datasets added

We introduced 50 new building services datasets and a number of typical building services systems to allow modeling in a very simplified manner typical building services scenarios. These have also been integrated to Carbon Designer. Also additional manufacturer specific data was added. To support their organisation, we introduced new subtypes:  Piping, Lighting, Ventilation Ducting Channels, Cabling, Energy production systems (CHP, PVs, etc.).

New One Click LCA generic materials released

Ten new One Click LCA generic materials were released. These generic materials will be automatically adjusted to local manufacturing conditions when used, and are especially suitable when local industry has not published a local market average LCA profile dataset.

New SAP 10 compliant UK energy profiles added

UK users can use SAP 10 compliant UK energy profiles in their LCA going forward.

Over 300 new building materials LCA profiles added, including furniture

We updated range of databases and added over 300 new materials LCA profiles. These cover Europe and North America, with some datapoints in other regions as well. The updated datasets also include several furniture EPDs.

40 new ASHRAE-compliant US constructions added

New constructions for building envelope, floor slabs and other elements were added to the software construction library and the Carbon Designer North American regions.

Data cards enriched with additional information, including thermal conductivity and descriptions

Insulation products have been enriched with thermal lambda values and those are shown on data cards, when product has such parameter defined. Product descriptions have also been enhanced, including the images for generic products as shown earlier.

Newly deactivated datapoints will have deactivation reason visible

Sometimes datapoints are reissued. One Click LCA practise is that in such cases, we deactivate the existing datapoint (to prevent it being added again), and add a new datapoint with the new values. This allows preserving existing calculation results unchanged, unless the user wants to change the datapoint. This update allows us to show deactivation reasons, which can help you decide if updating an deactivated datapoint to the latest profile is worth it.

Tool specific updates – Net Zero, BREEAM, Energie Carbone, RICS and DGNB

Net Zero projects can now include vegetation carbon withdrawals, carbonisation and refrigerants

The ‘Emissions and removals’ input form was added to the BREEAM International, BREEAM UK & Life Cycle Carbon - Global tools. This query allows for including concrete carbonisation and vegetation carbon withdrawal as negative emissions during use phase of a building. The same form can be used also for inputting refrigerant leakages to optimize for example HVAC systems. 

This comes with a comprehensive database of profiles for refrigerants and vegetation:

- Refrigerant list contains 62 different refrigerants, and for each one prohibited in EU now or in 2020 that is mentioned.
- Vegetation list contains 100 different types of trees, searchable with English and Latin names. Choosing any trees will result into automatic carbon sequestration being accounted.  Choosing any trees will account for carbon sequestration being accounted in 'Biogenic carbon storage' category.

Improvements and updates for BREEAM International
The BREEAM International tool now has a new table for site impacts displayed as the last table in the results report. This allows supporting the Man 03 credits Site Impacts Monitoring for transports, which must be linked to the materials accounted for in the Mat 01 LCA credit.

Improvements and updates for RICS whole life carbon tool

The RICS whole life carbon assessment tool now allows for entering a flexible service life. This allows working with infrastructure assets for example.

Improvements and updates for the Energie Carbone tool

In the French Energie Carbone tools there will be only one classification question grouping both the first and second tier classification (Lot et Sous-lot). The higher level classification is generated automatically, if a deeper level classification is selected.

In addition to the RS2E, any configurator EPD's uploaded after this release will be exported to the results file.

Improvements and updates for DGNB tools

The new DGNB 2018 points calculation has been added. 

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