Release notes September 2019

Release notes September 2019

Highlights

This release improves result readability and visualisation, and includes below updates: 
  1. All licenses: Swedish language, hiding designs and 10+ user requested features & updates
  2. Business: improved Copy & Merge and import for infrastructure projects is streamlined 
  3. Expert: Materials Specifier, beta of manufacturing localisation v2 and calculation details 
  4. Carbon Designer: UK/Ireland and Finland regions now available, several improvements
  5. Over 600 new materials datapoints since August
Major report visualisation update with flexible and adjustable graphics options

Result report sections are now reorganised into expandable sections that allow you to always see only the information that you wish to see, with less scrolling up and down. Main graphical results allow you to view results in any of the indicators impact categories by:
  1. life-cycle stages
  2. classifications (e.g. Uniformat, RICS, and other classifications)
  3. material type, as drill-down chart allowing to drill down to the next level, for example by clicking concrete the graph shows all concrete subtypes
  4. material mass by classifications. This is a static chart, so always showing mass to contrast the data between emissions intensity and materials intensity by classifications
These graphs can be switched between pie, column and bar charts. Clicking any of the legend items will hide the respective legend items (e.g. to hide a dominant source to see other sources).
Data tables for the charts can be shown below the charts, and charts work for all impact categories.



Most contributing materials view is now more readable, and data is structured in columns.
Note: seeing more sustainable alternatives for materials remains an Expert level feature.



Features for all license levels

Upcoming events and relevant updates are now shown in a side bar after you log in. The updates and events are regionalised based on your settings to make sure the information shown is most relevant for you.



More features for all license levels:
  1. Swedish language version available on September 23rd! Var så god!
  2. Also, Italian language version coming soon! Prego!
  3. Language corrections were done also in German, French, Finnish and Norwegian languages.
  4. Local compensation feature is now called “Material manufacturing localisation” for clarity.
  5. Building materials can be searched using a Properties filter called “Biogenic CO2 stored”. This helps find all types of products that store biogenic carbon. 
  6. Designs can be hidden. This allows you to hide work in progress or draft designs no longer considered from your project view, while still retaining access to them if needed later. To hide a design, click a design name and choose “Hide”.
  7. All the carbon clouds now include also percentage that shows how many percent each input row represents of the total result. This makes spotting hotspots even easier.




Some of the features requested by users during spring 2019 now available:
  1. When a filtered list only has one item left, hitting Enter adds that material to the query.
  2. Both Save and Results buttons are now available in the Filters bar, which follows the user while scrolling downwards on the page. This allows saving data without losing position on the screen (and updating total project carbon figures). Requires Filters to be visible. 
  3. In the Building materials query, you can set the type of filter to ‘private’, searching only within private data of your organisation. This is for using your private EPD or construction library.
  4. Under the Help menu, there’s a form to submit a request for adding new data to our data team. We request that this form be used in priority to speed up requests.
  5. Improved guidance messages within the software to clarify next steps to follow.
  6. If your license has project capacity limitations, their used and available capacity is shown under Licenses menu, if licenses are linked to an organisation the user is member of.
  7. If you hover your mouse over a design name, additional information is show in a hover over.
  8. In floating licenses, the license manager can kick out other users to free up seats.
  9. Life-cycle cost report graphs also now include units.
  10. Life-cycle cost calculations now also take better in account thickness variability in materials
  11. Excel number formatting enforcement for exported Excel reports has been improved. Reports can now be generated by user choice either in scientific, or decimal formatting. Decimal formatted reports are recognized as numbers in most contexts.
  12. To increase account security, password minimum complexity increased. Applies if changing password: min. 8 characters, including at least one upper- and one lowercase letter and one number. We will also introduce periodic two factor authentications to protect your data.

Features in Carbon Designer module

Carbon Designer add-on local regions are available for US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Northern and Continental Europe, and it allows modelling schematic design phase decisions quickly and easily. Inquire if interested!

  1. New region: UK Part L 2016 compliant model (all building types)
  2. New region: Finnish RakMk 2018 compliant model (residential buildings)
  3. Carbon Designer can now be used to set assessment period of the building (for tools that allow variable length assessment periods)
  4. Full list assumptions used in generating the model now visible under Assumptions
  5. Carbon Designer constructions and some constituents display now comments (if present)
  6. Carbon Designer constructions are now displayed also with their technical specification
  7. Services (beta) scope is now enhanced to also include water and wastewater services
  8. Also Carbon Designer only mode is now possible for selected applications
  9. Carbon Designer can now be used to calculate two scenarios for regions that support scenarios in Carbon Designer (e.g. regulatory level and passive house)

Features for Business license level

A new Copy & Merge feature allows copying datasets from your other projects as basis for a new project. While this feature can be used for all kinds of applications, it’s specifically also helping BREEAM UK users to combine sub-system options to a whole building LCA, or to re-use options.

Importing data from infrastructure tools directly via Revit or Simplebim is now seamlessly reclassified from IFC to infrastructure logic automatically, saving time for users.

Completeness and plausibility checker is now showing the feedback in the heading, before the section is expanded. Expanding the checked section will instantly show all feedback available.




Features for Expert license level

Expert level users can also use their own license for Send Me Data feature to send data to other Expert license users, not just receive it from non-licensed users.

Expert license users can now access multiple materials benchmarks from the product LCA profile. For example, a dataset that has both TRACI and CML characterisation can be opened for benchmarking separately in these data domains. The French Energie-Carbone tool allows seeing INIES only benchmarks; likewise, the Dutch NMD tool allows seeing only the NMD benchmarks.

Materials manufacturing localisation (formerly local compensation) method version 2, which is still in beta version, is allowing adjustment of the electricity grid mix used in addition of the location used. This allows you to choose for example which base year you use for manufacturing scenario, and in case a forward-looking scenario is available (e.g. for long-term infrastructure projects being built substantially later), this can also be considered.

Background calculations, for example unit conversions, are visible under the carbon clouds as a beta feature. These allow seeing for example how material density is used in calculation. These are not available for all processes. These are intended to support detailed analysis of calculation steps, for example to understand how a thickness of material is converted to a mass or volume.

New Materials Specifier feature is available under Tools. This feature allows you to make ad hoc materials comparisons without having to create a range of designs. These calculations do not interact with any designs in any way. They can be used for example to choose best flooring material without having to create a set of designs for flooring.

Indicator updates

  1. North American LEED tools now have automated completeness checker based on Uniformat
  2. Finnish government method for buildings carbon evaluation updated to 30 August 2019 version
  3. LCA Checker value thresholds for some materials updated and new ones added
  4. For CSR tools, classifying energy resources by use is now uniformized to single classification
  5. For life-cycle costing tools, a new region called “Material costs only, euro based” is available. This allows having material costs without cost of installation for your calculations when needed. Note: you can achieve same with any currency by setting labour unit costs to zero.
  6. Other minor updates

Database updates

  1. New generic materials and building services systems added.
  2. New materials data added from UK (BRE), France (INIES), Spain (several), Italy, Germany (IBU), EPD Norge and worldwide, total new data added since August over 600 new resources
  3. New constructions, in particular for UK Part L 2016 compliant building envelopes
  4. Significant range of updates, improvements and corrections
  5. National electricity mixes added for Ecuador, Oman and South Korea


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