Stornoway company develops Google plug-in

Greenspace Research Ltd., a Stornoway-based spinout company from Scotland’s UHI Millennium Institute, and Green Building Studio, Inc. are offering previews of a new green building energy analysis plug-in for Google SketchUp at this week's Greenbuild 2007 conference in Chicago.

The plugin, called Demeter after the Greek mother-earth goddess, enables users of SketchUp, the hugely popular Google 3D CAD programme, to send building models to Green Building Studio, Inc web servers for energy analysis reports. Energy lifecycle costs and building carbon footprints are immediately reported to the user via a Web browser.

Greenspace Research is the exclusive UK partner of California-based Green Building Studio’s and Demeter is one of the fruits of a two year research programme at Lews Castle College UHI in Stornoway. Green Building Studio’s building energy design alternatives allows a wide range of different constructions and HVAC systems to be evaluated for the effect on energy costs, driving down carbon emissions as a result.

Dr. Neil Finlayson, Senior Researcher at Greenspace Research, believes that a SketchUp-based energy analysis solution could make a significant dent on building-related carbon emissions: "Google SketchUp has become the world's most popular 3D CAD program because it is highly intuitive and just incredibly easy to use. The feedback we've been getting from architects and engineers interested in sustainability issues was that they wanted to use SketchUp as a basis for energy analysis of their models. We've developed a client which works with Green Building Studio's servers to give them exactly that, and we hope it will have a major impact on low carbon building design over the next few years."

The plug-in has the following features:

- Import of existing gbXML models into SketchUp
- Internet-based energy analysis using Green Building Studio
- View/Edit existing gbXML models.
- Apply building properties to existing SketchUp models

Demeter will be unveiled at this week's Greenbuild 2007 conference in Chicago, and will be on early public beta release from this week. Full production release is scheduled for end Q1 2008.