Assembly Builder

What is an assembly builder? Introduction and workflows.

Patrick Chopson avatar
Written by Patrick Chopson
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Building materials are an integral part of building design and construction. Any four walls and a roof can make an enclosure, however, for efficiency, comfort, and durability, these elements have to be meticulously designed and installed.
While the location, climate, and site drive the choice of materials for a structure, the building assemblies themselves determine the performance, cost, and carbon associated with it.

The new Assembly Builder is a feature that allows users to choose, customize, design, and share building assemblies.

Assembly Builder Interface in cove.tool

Image: Assembly Builder Interface

  1. Choose - Select an assembly from the library. These include a huge range of default energy code minimum and generic assemblies provided by us.

  2. Customize - Change the layer properties or switch with another layer in a default assembly to make it your own with ease.

  3. Design - Create an assembly from scratch by selecting products from an extensive list of product layers provided by the platform or by entering your own products received from contractors or manufacturers.

  4. Share - Save and Share assemblies with the entire firm to use them in other projects, saving time and effort.

Interface

The Assembly Builder interface consists of 3 major divisions:

Image: Assembly Library, Project Assembly and Assembly Details Window

  • Assembly Library
    The assembly catalog. The assembly catalog consists of all the assembly templates including default assemblies provided by the platform and the custom ones saved by the user as firm or personal.

  • Project Assemblies
    Assemblies in your project currently. The Project Assemblies consist of a list of assemblies that are currently assigned to the building elements in drawing.tool. By default, energy code minimum assemblies are assigned to any structure that is drawn. You can add more assemblies to this section from the project catalog and jump back to drawing.tool to assign those to your building.

  • Assembly Details
    The assembly editor. The assembly details section consists of all the properties and parameters of an assembly. It also shows a breakdown of the product layers that the assembly consists of.

How to use Assembly Builder?

The steps to use assembly builder effectively are:

  1. Create a project in cove.tool.

  2. Upload or create your geometry using a plugin or drawing.tool.

  3. Go to the drawing.tool.

  4. Assign assemblies for different building elements. Read more here.
    Things to note:

    1. A default assembly is assigned automatically to each building element when a new project is started.

    2. The list of assemblies shown in the drawing.tool elements tab are from the Project Assemblies panel in the Assembly Builder.

  5. Go to the Assembly Builder to create new assemblies, customize the existing assemblies, and add them to the Project Assemblies panel. Assemblies added to the project can be assigned in drawing.tool.

  6. Return to the drawing.tool elements tab to update the assignment of assemblies and continue running the analysis on the geometry.


Calculations

Calculations and related assumptions are provided for all the results for walls, roofs, floors, windows, and skylights.

Happy Modeling!


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