Material Templates
The Material Template is typically an Excel sheet where you assemble a series of BHoM Material Objects that consist of a Density, an Environmental Product Declaration (an entry from a Dataset), and a MaterialName. The material name should match the object's material name or names - depending on the number of layers (think of a layered wall or floor assembly). These material names could be assigned in Revit, or they can be assigned directly within your BHoM workflow.
You can imagine the way these materials would be assembled in Grasshopper, see an example here:
Now that we know the basic concepts of the LifeCycleAssessment_Toolkit, let's now map our first EPD MaterialFragment to an object! It will look something like this in grasshopper:
In this example, we first need any Physical object, a Column will be used here. By creating the Column we first note that it has the following data schema (this is important to note as we will be modifying these properties in order to map an EPD): Property > ConstantFramingProperty > Material > MaterialProperty > AluminumMaterial
This hierarchy of object properties and values is what we will need to modify in order to map an EPD. Because EPDs are MaterialFragments we can apply them like any material. We can do that by simply using a SetProperty() command and supplying the correct location as a target for the EPD or Property.Materialin this case.
Please note: Not all physical objects have the same data schema at this point in time. For example some materials could be located in the Construction.Layers.Material property instead of the example above. This is a current WIP to make things easier for you, and should be available in an upcoming beta. (You can already access this through a prototype branch if you're curious!).
More interested in Excel? The same process can be followed in Excel!
Now that you have an object with an EPD, you are ready to either Evaluate it or compile a complete Project Life Cycle Assessment.