<<PLEASE NOTE: This page is under construction>>

This page describes the structure and contents of ecoXML, an ASCII XML file format containing all the geometric, spatial, operational and material data required for the application of performance analysis on a 3D building model. The format also specifies common data structures for storing calculation results from a wide range of analysis as well as object-specific data such as attributes and shading masks.

It comprises the following core components:

• Material
  A material description with information on its acoustic , cost, lighting and thermal performance properties.
• Object
  Describes each geometric object in the model, its vertexes, zone and material assignments. When exported from ECOTECT, the definition also included areas
• Schedule
  Describes annual hourly operation schedules. This includes 12 distinct daily profiles and their assignment to the 365 days of the year.
• Zone
  A description of each room or grouped layer in the model. In describing a room, it includes information on activities, occupancy, mechanical systems and

It may also contain the following results sets:

• AnnualDailyData
  Daily total values of a specific dataset given for an entire year or part of a year in a series of 7 day blocks.
• AnnualHourlyData
  Hourly values of a specific dataset given for an entire year or part of a year in a series of 24hr blocks.
• DailyData
  A series of up to 365 datasets each containing 24 hourly values for different metrics from the same analysis day.
• GridData
  A means of storing 2D and 3D datasets that relate to each point of an analysis grid within a 3D model.
• MonthlyData
  A series of up to 730 datasets each containing 12 monthly average or total values for different metrics from the same analysis year.
• ObjectData
  A means of storing datasets that relate to the unique identifiers of specific objects in a model.
• ShadingData
  A very specific variant of the more flexible <ShadingMask> entity which contains only shading, incidence and reflection values for exactly 324 segments arranged in 10deg x 10deg azimuth and altitude grid over the sky dome. This entity is the standard for caching object-based shading data and allows simpler tools to support shading masks without having to implement all the different sky segmentation methods available in the <ShadingMask> entity
• ShadingMask
  A flexible means of defining and storing overshadowing and shading information. It allows you to define the number of sky segments used and their distribution over the sky dome as well as any number of datasets for each segment.