This tutorial is a brief overview of the layout of the Zebra spreadsheet. It covers the basic layout, complexity level, the summary sheet, calculators and license sheet. Subsequent tutorials will go into different aspects of the model in much more detail.

The first step is to download the model. We'd recommend that you always download a fresh copy of the tool before starting a new project, because we update it regularly. We’d recommend that you have the spreadsheet open to refer to as you read this tutorial.

The first sheet (“Background”) is a description of the background to the development of the model. There are no inputs to this sheet. We have covered this elsewhere.

The second sheet (“Instructions”) gives detailed instructions of how to use the tool. This sheet also has a single input, which is to set the complexity level. A powerful feature of Zebra is the ability to use it with different complexity levels. At the earliest stages of design, where many parameters are not yet known, you can run at a complexity level of 1. As the design becomes more refined and more parameters are available, you can simply increase the complexity level and input more detailed information.

Below the complexity level input is a summary of the inputs that you will need to enter. These correspond to the subsequent sheets with red tabs. When we increase the complexity level, more inputs will be required. However, although these inputs are not required at lower complexity levels, it does not mean that Zebra is ignoring these factors. Instead, it is still calculating them, but with reasonable default values. Changing the complexity level does not cause any of your previous inputs to be lost, so you can increase this as your design evolves, and the values you have already input will be retained.

The subsequent sheets (red tabs) allow you to enter these inputs. These input sheets can get quite complicated, so we will cover them in separate tutorials.

These input sheets continue until the Summary sheet, where the results of the model will be presented. This is the most important sheet, because it tells you how your building performs, and whether it meets the requirements you have specified. Here's an example of what this may look like when you have completed the input sheets. It will present several graphs summarising the carbon and energy performance of the buildings. It will also identify which performance requirements have been met, and which haven't. This allows us to adjust our design very quickly until we meet this requirement.

The sheets after the summary sheet have no direct effect on the model. The Calculators sheet provides several tools that may be useful to you as you are inputting values into Zebra. None of the values in this sheet input directly into the model. They help you to calculate values which you can then copy across into the model inputs as you require. Finally, the LICENSE sheet describes the license under which the Zebra model is distributed.

That’s a brief overview of the layout of the spreadsheet. We'll go into more detail about the inputs and summary sheets in later tutorials.