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A. Mahdavi:
"An inquiry into the "effort space" for computational building design analysis";
in: "04th International Workshop on Construction Information Technology in Education", K. Menzel (ed.); Tagungsband, Dresden, 2005, 17 - 24.

This paper describes a case study to estimate the time and effort needed by novice designers to computationally evaluate the performance of building designs. A group of senior architecture students participated in the study, learning and using a software application to assess the energy performance of six project submissions for a school building design competition. The study's outcome (time investment ranges for various components of the modelling activity) was evaluated and further extrapolated to estimate the effort neede for a more comprehensive computational assessment of the environmental performance of designs. Moreover, the results were applied toward the demonstrative derivation of multi-dimensional simulation "effort space" for the estimation of time requirement for computationally supported building performance analysis.