PLEASE NOTE: This page is a placeholder. The exact format of ecoXML is in development and will definitely not be as outlined below. The beauty of XML is that it is human readable if necessary. The following is nowhere near that yet...

The <Material> entity defines the properties of elements of the actual building fabric or items within the building required to define their behaviour and/or response to different environmental conditions.

It contains the following fields/tags:

type

An integer or XML string value referring to the type of building element or item being described. When defined as a string value in the XML file, this must be uppercase to simplify string matching.

INTEGER = STRING	INTEGER = STRING
0 = VOID	8 = DOOR
1 = ROOF	9 = POINT
2 = FLOOR	10 = SPEAKER
3 = CEILING	11 = LIGHT
4 = WALL	12 = APPLIANCE
5 = PARTITION	13 = LINE
6 = WINDOW	14 = SOLAR COLLECTOR
7 = PANEL	15 = CAMERA

name

A string value containing the name of the element. This can comprise a maximum of 64 characters. Whilst the name in an ecoXML file may contain white space characters (space, tab, etc), these will always be converted to underscores when read into the data structures of any Square One software as this is a requirement of many of the 3rd-party tools often exported to.

desc

A 255 character description of the material element and its composition.

resources

Seven (7) values representing the element's cost and environmental performance characteristics:

1. unitType (0 = Area, 1 = Length, 2 = Item).
2. costPerUnit (Currency/unit)
3. greenhouseGas (kg/unit)
4. embodiedEnergy (kJ/unit)
5. maintenanceCost (Currency/unit/yr)
6. maintenanceEnergy (kJ/unit/yr)
7. expectedLife (Yrs)

dims

Three (3) values with the following representation:

1. Thickness (m)
2. Weight (kg/unit)
3. Default (0 = No, 1 = Yes)

acoustic

Sound absorption or emission values. If the element is a POINT, LINE, SPEAKER, APPLIANCE or CAMERA the first 19 values represent its fractional output distribution (0-1) in 10deg steps between 0 and 180deg. For all other types, the first 9 values represent the sound absorption coefficients for each frequency band between 64Hz and 16kHz and the next nine its sound reduction index (SRI) in dB for the same frequency bands.

heatflow

Seven (7) values representing the thermal performance characteristics:

1. (no longer used)
2. U-VALUE (W.m2.K)
3. ADMITTANCE (W.m2.K)
4. DECREMENT (0-1)
5. THERMAL LAG (Hrs)
6. (no longer used)
7. SOLAR ABSORPTION (0-1)

lighting

Ten (10) values representing lighting performance characteristics:

1. VISIBLE_TRANSPARENCY (0-1)
2. INTERNAL SPECULARITY (0-1)
3. EXTERNAL SPECULARITY (0-1)
4. INTERNAL EMISSIVITY (0-1)
5. EXTERNAL EMISSIVITY (0-1)
6. INTERNAL ROUGHNESS (0-1)
7. EXTERNAL ROUGHNESS (0-1)
8. (no longer used)
9. INTERNAL COLOUR
10. EXTERNAL COLOUR

Colour values are given as an integer (to the base 10) instead of [hexidecimal. You can easily use the Windows Calculator to perform a conversion from the more common #RRGGBB hex format.