Export to One Click LCA

Tekla Structural Designer
2021
Tekla Structural Designer

Export to One Click LCA

One Click LCA is third party software for performing a life cycle assessment of your structure and optimizing its embodied carbon.

From Tekla Structural Designer you can either compile an offline report, which is a compact summary of materials in the structure that can be edited if required before being manually imported into One Click LCA, or you can upload the report data directly to One Click LCA online.

Overview

Scope

Tekla Structural Designer includes material information in tabular data tables, in general the scope of the exported data matches this. This gives a lot of the most commonly requested material quantity information, but is not considered to be exhaustive:

  • Data available in Tekla Structural Designer but not exported

    • Shear studs on composite beams

  • Data NOT available in Tekla Structural Designer (and therefore not exported)

    • Reinforcement in any slab other than cast-in-place reinforced concrete slabs

    • Bearing Walls

    • Shear Only Walls

    • Transverse shear reinforcement required by composite beams

    • surface area of timber members, cold rolled members, general material members

    • DELTABEAM® mass - a zero value is exported to help ensure allowance is added manually

    • analysis elements

  • Exported Data not otherwise available in Tekla Structural Designer

    • Precast slab screed/topping area

    • Composite slab decking type / area

    • material in gable and parapet posts

    • surface area of defined “roof panels” and “wall panels”

The above summary is not guaranteed to be exhaustive, it is important to consider “what is missing”? Are all the significant physical items you defined in Tekla Structural Designer being covered by the export?

Additional information

The following notes may assist with initial use of the export:

  • Grouping in One Click LCA

    On import there is a phase where it is suggested that lots of the exported data items can be grouped together on the basis of a shared “IFCMATERIAL”. The sections below give examples where you may consider the value of doing this:

    • composite / non-composite beams

      the mass of these beam types are exported separately.

      you may wish to apply higher carbon factors to composite beams to allow for shear studs and transverse shear reinforcement.

    • steel beams of all different fabrication types

      the mass of steel members of different fabrication types are exported separately.

      e.g. rolled, plated, Westok, FABSEC®, DELTABEAM®

      you may wish to apply different carbon factors to these different types of member

    • surface areas

      the surface areas of slabs and many beams are all exported separately.

      if you have no requirement to use any surface area information then it will be easier to leave these grouped for simpler deletion.

  • Slabs

    • The data for each slab is exported separately (a slab may contain many slab-items).

      In simple situations this will mean one group of data for each level, but if multiple slabs are defined in a level you will get separate data for each.

    • Data for different types of slab is also kept separate

      e.g. Cast-in-place reinforced slabs, post-tensioned slabs, precast slabs, composite slabs, various other general material slabs

      For reinforced concrete slabs this allows a more detailed understanding of reinforcement per slab.

    • Limitation - as noted above reinforcement data is not available/exported for other slab types, this will need to be allowed for in one of two ways:

      • Use the surface area information to add an allowance per m2

      • Adjust the carbon factor or concrete/topping in the slabs to allow for reinforcement content

      In either case this will mean avoiding grouping of the relevant data items.

  • “roof panels” and “wall panels” surface areas

    • Roof and wall surface area data is included in case it assists with the inclusion of cladding materials.

Feedback

  • Please send us feedback if you feel that:

    • Important data is missing

    • Included data should be totalled/presented differently - perhaps there should be options to do things in different ways (possibly at different stages of design?)

    • There should be options to filter out certain data types because you don’t always want to use them (for example surface area info)

Show report

  1. On the BIM Integration tab, click One Click LCA.

    The One Click LCAReport dialog opens.

  2. Click Show report
    The report opens in Excel, (or whatever software is associated with .xlsx files).
The resulting materials file can then be edited if required before being manually imported into One Click LCA, or it can be passed on to a third party and imported into One Click LCA.

Show online results

Note: Online export requires:
  1. A One Click LCA license.
  2. An API password. (You get this API password from your One Click LCA user profile page. For details, see this article in the One Click LCA Help Centre.)
  1. On the BIM Integration tab, click One Click LCA.

    The One Click LCAReport dialog opens.

  2. Enter your One Click LCA user name and password, then click Log in.
  3. Click Show online results.
    The material data from the Tekla Structural Designer model is uploaded to One Click LCA.
  4. Proceed through the One Click LCA wizard:
    1. Create/Choose project
    2. Consider groupings
    3. Review / apply mapping
    On completion the amount of embodied carbon in the model is determined.
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