Project name: Cogiteon Lesser Poland Science Centre
Company: CEgroup. – HVAC Installations
Location: Kraków, Poland
Schedule: 2021 – 2022
Architect: Heinle, Wischer und Partner Architekci LLC – Architecture
MagiCAD software: MagiCAD Piping and MagiCAD Ventilation for Revit
About CEgroup
CEgroup is an innovative Polish engineering design firm that employs 50 Mechanical, Electrical and plumbing (MEP) engineers who have been using Revit software for large volume projects since 2012. Since 2015, the company has also used MagiCAD for Revit in their projects, deploying more and more of its features with every new project.
About the project and its challenges
With a vast floor area of 20,000 m², the Cogiteon Lesser Poland Science Centre is a high-performing, multi-purpose building with exhibition, conference, laboratory and workshop spaces, as well as, office and catering facilities.
CEgroup entered this project with previous experience in designing large buildings with Building Information Modelling (BIM) methodology. However, in the tender brief, the investor set the BIM modelling requirements at a very high level so the project called for new BIM techniques. Consequently, a BIM model was used at the design stage for clash detection as well as energy, sound and hydraulic calculations. Subsequently, the same model was used for preparing the bills of quantities, costing and construction schedules. One of the assumptions of the General Contractor tender was that the model would be updated during construction and finally handed over to the Building Administrator to assist in their Facility Manager role.
“MagiCAD software significantly helped us to meet these expectations,” says Piotr Łuszkiewicz, BIM Manager at CEgroup. “The unusual shape of the building and specific functional architectural solutions called for unconventional engineering design solutions. When it came to ensuring appropriate room temperatures, it was not always possible to heat the rooms using radiators. In most areas of the building, the required air parameters such as heating, cooling and humidity are maintained by ventilation systems. Such a solution generates a high level of complexity of the ventilation systems, making them the most extensive part of the entire building setup. In order to optimise the implementation process, coordination and cost of the system, it was necessary to use an efficient calculation tool to verify our assumptions.”
The Solution
Hydraulic calculations
“A dedicated module included in the MagiCAD Ventilation package is a great aid to performing hydraulic calculations,” says Radosław Radziecki, HVAC Designer at CEgroup. “Regardless of the complexity of the ventilation systems, the calculations with all needed data are clearly laid out in a table form”, he adds.
As shown in the table below, the hydraulic system diagram is shown together with the specific system components and the critical path for the entire system. This form of presentation is a valuable source of information for verifying the solutions and standards adopted in the building.
Sound calculations
In some cases, in addition to the selection of equipment in terms of noise emission, sound calculations are required during the design process. These calculations have a significant impact on the performance of the ventilation system, as they help to confirm the validity of the solutions in relation to the intended comfort of the building’s occupants.
Labels for ventilation duct ordinates
“The design of the Cogiteon project has been created entirely in BIM technology with full parameterisation of items based on EiR and BEP documentation. Due to the unique nature of the project, it was required at various stages of the project to present detailed 2D documentation containing accurate information allowing verification of alignment. In this respect the function of automatic ordinate mapping for ventilation ducts by the MagiCAD Ventilation module proved to be very helpful,” says Piotr.
MagiCAD Ventilation module offers automatic assignment of ordinates to appropriate MagiCAD parameters and allows for obtaining full height information. The data includes ordinates in relation to the bottom or top of ventilation ducts. The reference can be a selected building level or the absolute level, including a scenario with or without duct insulation. This information can be fully utilised as required and presented in figures as labels.
Calculation of duct fitting areas
“While the calculation of ventilation duct surface areas is supported by the core Revit functionality, the calculation of areas for ventilation fittings prior to MagiCAD was somewhat of a problem,” explains Radosław. “Each individual fitting needed to contain a properly specified formula for calculating the surface area to be shown in the bill of materials. When using libraries of ventilation fittings from different sources depending on the library supplier, the required area was given using shared parameters under different names. As a result, it was necessary for one physical parameter (in this case the area) to show different parameters in the bill of materials. This presentation of data prevented an automatic summation of the total area of all fittings, as each parameter was summed up separately.
A solution to streamline this process is a feature offered by the MagiCad Ventilation package. By running the Update Parameters feature for selected ventilation system components, an algorithm will examine the geometry of the selected components and calculate their current area, which is then entered into the MC Surface Area parameter”, he adds.
As shown in picture 8, these figures can be flexibly shown in the bill of materials and used to make a material estimate for the ventilation fittings.
