Calculate Embodied Carbon (CO2) for Revit/IFC Models using AI Classification

Estimate embodied carbon (CO2e) for grouped BIM/CAD elements. The workflow accepts an existing XLSX (grouped element data) or, if missing, can trigger a local RvtExporter.exe to generate one. It detects category fields, filters out non-building elements, infers aggregation rules with AI, computes CO2 using densities & emission factors, and exports a multi-sheet Excel plus a clean HTML report.

What it does - Reads or builds XLSX (from your model via RvtExporter.exe when needed). - Finds category/volumetric fields; separates building vs. annotation elements. - Uses AI to infer aggregation rules (sum/mean/first) per header. - Groups rows by your groupby field and aggregates totals. - Prepares enhanced prompts and calls your LLM to classify materials and estimate CO2 (A1-A3 minimum). - Computes project totals and generates a multi-sheet XLSX + HTML report with charts and hotspots.

Prerequisites - LLM credentials for one provider (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok/OpenRouter). Enable one chat node and connect credentials. - Windows host only if you want to auto-extract from .rvt/.ifc via RvtExporter.exe. If you already have an XLSX, Windows is not required. - Optional: mapping/classifier files (XLSX/CSV/PDF) to improve material classification.

How to use 1. Import this JSON into n8n. 2. Open the Setup/Parameters node(s) and set: - projectfile — path to your .rvt/.ifc or to an existing grouped rvt.xlsx - pathtoconverter — C:\\DDCConverterRevit\\datadrivenlibs\\RvtExporter.exe (optional) - groupby — e.g., Type Name / Category / IfcType - sheetname — default Summary (if reading from XLSX) 3. Enable one LLM node and attach credentials; keep others disabled. 4. Execute (Manual Trigger). The workflow detects/builds the XLSX, analyzes, classifies, estimates CO2, then writes Excel and opens the HTML report.

Outputs - Excel (CO2AnalysisReportYYYY-MM-DD.xlsx, ~8 sheets): Executive Summary, All Elements, Material Summary, Category Analysis, Impact Analysis, Top 20 Hotspots, Data Quality, Recommendations. - HTML: executive report with key KPIs and charts. - Per-group fields include: Material (EU/DE/US), Quantity & Unit, Density, Mass, CO2 Factor, Total CO2 (kg/tonnes), CO2 %, Confidence, Assumptions.

Notes & tips - Input quantities (volumes/areas) are already aggregated per group — do not multiply by element count. - Use -no-collada upstream if you only need XLSX in extraction. - Prefer ASCII-safe paths and ensure write permissions to output folder.

Categories Data Extraction · Files & Storage · ETL · CAD/BIM · Carbon/ESG

Tags cad-bim, co2, carbon, embodied-carbon, lca, revit, ifc, xlsx, html-report, llm