2021 Release Archives

TestFit 3.01: Energy Use Intensity in TestFit

In our last major release of the year (a total of 8), we’re proud to introduce Energy Use Intensity in TestFit, thanks to our integration with cove.tool. I have been working in the apartment industry for six years now, and in this time there has been little effort to analyze energy usage for this commodity building type. As global climate issues become more commonplace, this KPI will become as important as NRSF & yield-on-cost.

What is EUI and why does it matter? Energy Use Intensity helps our industry understand the operating costs of a future building. Energy costs are rising and focus on operational carbon is only increasing. Adding EUI to the feasibility stage will make sure that energy consumption is part of the calculus for all development projects, even commodity buildings. Furthermore, understanding EUI is increasingly mandated on certain types of projects. So as an industry, let’s get ahead of the ball, when critical financial decisions are made: during feasibility.

We’re hosting a webinar to kick this off next Tuesday, December 7th at 2pm CST, or read on for more resources.

– Clifton Harness, CEO at TestFit Inc.

EUI in TestFit

Assess EUI in TestFit instantly

All the building geometry that is needed to calculate your EUI is constantly updated as you manipulate your TestFit buildings. Easily add the percentage of glazing and send the data to cove.tool to get your EUI back in a few seconds.

Compare EUI across designs

A lot of the power of this integration comes from the ability to measure your different building designs against each other. Easily compare what your total EUI will be between buildings and adjust them to reduce your EUI.

Export to cove.tool for further analysis

Calculate operational carborn (kgCO2e emissions), embodied carbon (a1-a3, aka cradle-to-gate), the estimated number of earned LEED points, Benchmarking info, a climate report, water usage, energy utility costs, and some cost estimation related to envelop and systems by exporting your TestFit data to cove.tool.

Want to learn more? Join our webinar Tuesday December 7th at 2pm CST or try EUI in TestFit. If you’re a TestFit & cove.tool client, get started with our Knowledge Base article.

Improvements

Added 3 new prototype presets for industrial sites.
Added industrial-specific elements to the DXF export.
Improved the generation of freight drive aisles in industrial sites.

Bug fixes

Fixed a crash attempting to hit the parking ratio in complex garden sites.
Fixed garden manual mode only showing one available building type.
Fixed empty units in new garden sites when using metric.
Fixed a rare case where the drive aisle was missing on industrial sites.
Fixed a rare case of warehouses being disconnected from all drive aisles.
Fixed some industrial tabulation differences between the GUI and PDF export.
Fixed back-to-back freight parking areas having a different number of stalls.
Fixed freight parking areas occasionally having too few stalls.
Fixed a rare case where high density buildings were missing roofs.
Fixed a crash when attempting to open Enscape on unsupported computers.
Fixed the inability to edit a site boundary on top of an underlay image.
Fixed context menus showing up in the wrong place when a setback is selected.
Fixed spaces inside a building moving when being selected.

TestFit 3.0: TestFit Industrial & New UI

After four years of work on configurators for housing, we have embarked on a new building type: industrial. At first glance, they appear to be simple rectangles, but in reality they are the most optimized buildings that humans endeavor to build today. In the first iteration of this configurator, TestFit solves for the largest possible building, the freight parking demand, lot coverage, and the parking demand. Our software solves for these four competing priorities, giving the best possible building outcome.

We’ve had a long-term beta testing phase with this industrial configurator and it’s already making an impact on the industry with those testers. Check out the release notes below & join our webinar next week.

In other exciting news – we’ve launched a first version of our new UI. It eliminates 60% of clicks and I frankly can’t wait for y’all to try it. Here’s a short video & revamped Quick Start Guide to get you started.

TestFit Industrial

Maximize your industrial project with single, multiple, and prototypical buildings all on one site

TestFit’s algorithms work to maximize the size of your industrial building area based on your chosen site and particular width and depth ranges. TestFit can place multiple buildings on a site, as well as prototype buildings that can be saved as presets.

Automatic dock configuration / maximize docks

Number of docks automatically created based on size of building. By default, TestFit attempts to place the maximum number of docks possible.

Single- or cross-docked warehouses

Select whether your chosen warehouse is single- or cross-loaded.

Truck & car parking ratios

Set truck parking as a ratio to the number of docks.

Set car parking based on the area of the building.

Truck turning radius

Adjust drive aisle turn radius to match the necessary turning radius of your fleet.

Get more accurate costs during feasibility

Get quantity takeoffs for cost estimation of industrial space, light- and heavy-loaded paving, and tilt-up wall area.

Don’t start from scratch

Create your own presets & databases so you can quickly replicate building types on new projects.

Retention / detention ponds

Establish adequate water detention based on percentage of total site area & move around as needed.

Roads

Split up your site into customized building shapes using roads.

Structural grid

Manipulate your structural bay sizing with all the necessary parameters for your speed bays and normal bays.

Easements

Work around existing easements.

Prototypical buildings

Use a standard or prototypical building from your company to place on a site.

Fire safety requirements

Automatic creation of stairs for fire egress along docks.

How to get started with TestFit Industrial

If you’re a TestFit client and would like to try TestFit Industrial for yourselves, please check out our Knowledge Base article.

Not a TestFit client yet? Book a demo for TestFit Industrial.

Updated User Interface

With a handful of major feature releases behind us, it was time to look at our overall user experience. We started asking critical questions not just about what major markets we want to serve but how our individual users are interacting with our product on a day-to-day basis. We want to not only provide smart algorithms and accurate data, but we want to help you reach those solutions more intuitively with effortless flexibility and customization throughout the process.

Our first step is an overhaul to our interface that achieves the following:

Reorganize the tools for easier discoverability
Create more interaction in the main design canvas
Provide only relevant tools at each step so users are not lost in sea of buttons and inputs
Provide more in-app user instruction

Get started now by checking out our revamped Quick Start Guide and / or this short video below.

Other features

Added an in-app tutorial to introduce the basics of TestFit.
Allow loading custom spaces with no user-defined shape in mass-based sites.
Added cars to low density unit driveways in the Enscape render.

Minor improvements & bug fixes

Fixed garden sites ignoring the “corner angle threshold” parameter.
Fixed the unsaved work warning failing to appear on MacOS.
Fixed a crash when entering the 3D view for an unsolved site.
Fixed a crash deleting the second to last site in a plan.
Fixed empty gurban sites after dragging the parking entrance.

TestFit 2.22: Enscape for TestFit

Introducing Enscape for TestFit

Real-time building generation and visualization

We’re proud to connect the world’s most powerful building configurator to the world’s leading visualization engine. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Enscape, it’s “real-time rendering that brings your visual exploration directly into your modeling tools so you can focus on creating, designing, and building.”. It’s an industry standard for presenting stunning, life-like imagery to key stakeholders, and we’re proud to partner with such a visionary team.

Creating feasibility studies faster, with financial metrics PLUS excellent visualization helps you create more value, faster. The traditional process would’ve involved splicing unit plans together in CAD or Revit, counting and calculating takeoffs, and calculating metrics like net rentable & parking ratios. Then you would’ve spent a lot of time getting the presentation right, only for your client to ask you to change one aspect, and you basically would have to start over from scratch.

Enscape for TestFit allows you to get to the best design faster, while visualizing the very realistic outcome. You can iterate on the fly and everything updates, from metrics in TestFit, to your visuals in Enscape.

If you’d like to know more, check out our dedicated Enscape page.

How it works

Compare your chosen schemes and visions by simply launching Enscape. Any changes made in TestFit will automatically update in Enscape. This will enable exciting new workflows, like editing in plan and viewing changes in rendered 3D.

With the power of co-creation, parametrically adjust key rendering assets such as cars and trees. You can also move these manually afterwards.

Understand site context

Explore your building’s sense of place within a chosen community by turning on context buildings in TestFit and exploring the surrounding area in the beauty of Enscape.

Shadow studies & more

Improve upon TestFit’s existing lighting tools with complex inputs like calendar input and time of day for shadow studies with Enscape.

Export your Enscape visuals

Export crafted views to lossless .png for beautiful client & stakeholders presentations.

How to get started with Enscape for TestFit

TestFit clients will automatically get TestFit for Enscape for free until January upon updating their software to TestFit 2.22. After January, the integration will be part of a newer TestFit offering.

Check out our Knowledge Base article for how to use TestFit for Enscape. You can also check out this webinar recording.

Not a TestFit client yet? Request a trial here.

Other features

Added a welcome screen showing useful links, recent files, and patch notes.
Added a tool to draw spaces from a centerline and offset dimension.
Improved unit image attachment resolution at farther zoom levels.

Fixes

Fixed space colors not updating on color picker interactions.
Fixed color picker popups creating scrollbars in the source panel.
Fixed road intersections overlapping buildings when inside sites.
Fixed color picker popups creating scrollbars in the source panel.
Fixed some plan elements remaining interactive when covered by a panel.
Fixed some context menus showing up outside the window.
Fixed incorrect floor load and gross area for detailed office buildings.
Fixed some 3D objects being culled when viewed through glass windows.
Fixed some Windows computers avoiding the dedicated GPU by default.