[BLDG-SIM] VisualSPARK 1.0.1 NOW AVAILABLE

[Jason Glazer]

January 31, 2000

 ------------------ VisualSPARK 1.0.1 NOW AVAILABLE --------
-------------

VisualSPARK 1.0.1 has just been released.
It is available free of charge from Lawrence Berkeley 
National Laboratory.
To download the program please go to:

             http://SimulationResearch.lbl.gov > 
VisualSPARK

SPARK is an equation-based simulation environment that 
allows you to
build customized models of complex physical processes by 
connecting
calculation objects that represent system components like  
walls, fans, heat 
exchangers, chillers, ducts, mixing boxes, controls, etc. 
It is aimed at the
simulation of innovative and/or complex building systems 
that are beyond the 
scope of whole-building programs like DOE-2 and EnergyPlus. 
VisualSPARK adds
a graphical user interface to SPARK to simplify use of the 
program.

The main elements of VisualSPARK are

*  a user interface
*  a network specification language
*  graph-theoretic reduction methods to reduce the number 
of iteration variables
*  a solver for solving simultaneous algebraic and 
differential equations
*  a processor for graphically displaying results
*  a model library of HVAC components and systems

With the network specification language you create equation-
based
calculation objects, and link the objects into networks 
that represent
a building's envelope or HVAC components or systems. The 
solver solves
this network for user-specified input parameters. With the 
results
processor you graphically display the results of the 
calculation.
Graph-theoretic reduction techniques automatically reduce 
the number
of iteration variables, allowing VisualSPARK to obtain a 
solution
10 to 20 times faster than similar programs.

VisualSPARK runs under the Windows 95/98/NT/2000, SunOS, 
Solaris and
Linux operating systems.


           IMPROVEMENTS IN VisualSPARK 1.0.1 INCLUDE:

CHANGES TO THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE

* New examples have been added to the tutorial.
* Version number now appears in all window title bars.
* Balloon messages have been added to the Component 
Preference Editor.
* Layout of the Component Preference Editor has been 
changed to
    a more logical format with parts enabled only when they 
are allowable.
* Multiple trace files are now allowed, one for each trace 
type.
* Time units have been added to the X-axis title on graphs.
* Multiple units (e.g. "[W, deg C]" ) have been added to Y-
axis titles
     on graphs.
* Graph lines are now thicker to improve visibility.
* On graph legends, curves that are mapped to the Y2 axis 
are grouped
     after curves mapped to the Y1 axis.
* Yellow curve color has been changed to gold for 
visibility.
* The run.log file now pops up in addition to the error.log 
file
     if there is a run-time problem while running the 
solver 

CHANGES TO DOCUMENTATION

* The separate Windows and Unix Installation and Usage 
Guides
     have been combined into a single document called the
     "VisualSPARK 1.0.1 Users Guide."
* The Users Guide now contains an extended tutorial that 
shows
     step-by-step how to set up a SPARK model of an air-
conditioned
     room with a PI temperature controller.

CHANGES TO INPUT LANGUAGE PARSER

* The LINK statement now creates a variable without 
specifying
     any connections.
* The PORT statement has a new keyword of the form 
LIKE=anotherPortName.
     This copies the properties (including the subports) of 
the port named
     'anotherPortName', to the port currently being 
defined.

CHANGES TO THE SETUP PROGRAM

* The format of the problem.cpp file generated by setup has 
been modified
     to support the runtime loading scheme. See "Changes to 
Solver" for
     more details.

CHANGES TO THE SOLVER

* A runtime loading scheme has been added to solver in 
order to
     load the problem description contained in the 
problem.cpp file
     at runtime, during startup, as opposed to during the 
compilation
     step. This overcomes a compiler limitation that was 
encountered
     with large SPARK problems and also provides a faster 
way of
     loading problems during the problem testing phase. 
VisualSPARK
     can now be used to solve very large problems 
consisting of a 
     thousand or more equations.

* The scaling scheme was modified to compute the weighted 
Euclidean
     norm of the residual function that is displayed to the 
cout stream
     in the detailed diagnostic mode.
     The scale is now the absolute value of the break 
variable instead of
     the arithmetic mean of the value of the break variable 
and of the
     value returned by the inverse associated with the 
break variable.
     Thus, the residual norm is no longer limited to a 
maximum value of 2.
     This new scaling scheme also improves the line-search 
backtracking
     step control.  The time units of the Clock and DT 
links are now
     overridden with the corresponding unit strings 
specified in the
     problem run file. This allows the correct units to be 
displayed in the
     header portion of the output, trace and snapshot 
files.

* In the computation of the Secant method (based on the 
Broyden's update
     formula), fixed a bug that was returning a constant 
positive value for any
     negative partial derivative.

* Input files are now checked at runtime to make sure that 
the time
     stamps for the input values are specified in 
increasing order.

* The SPARK library functions defined in the file spark.h 
are now
     declared as part of the SPARK namespace (still in the 
same header
     file). This is to avoid potential name collision with 
user-defined
     functions in the atomic classes. The atomic classes 
defined in the
     globalclass directory and in the hvactk/class 
directory have been
     modified accordingly by adding namespace scope 
resolution before
     the function names.

------------------------------------------------------------
--------

If you would like to get an idea of what the program does 
before
you download it, you can review the "SPARK Reference 
Manual" and
the "VisualSPARK Users Guide," which can be downloaded from
the VisualSPARK site. To obtain a free copy of the program 
and/or
review the documentation, go to 

             http://SimulationResearch.lbl.gov > 
VisualSPARK

Note that you do not have to already have VisualSPARK 1.0 
to obtain
VisualSPARK 1.0.1.

SPARK was developed by the LBNL Simulation Research Group 
and
Ayres Sowell Associates, with support from the U.S. 
Department of Energy,
Dru Crawley, program manager.

=========================================================
Jason Glazer, P.E.  mailto:jglazer at gard.com  847 698 5686
GARD Analytics - http://www.gard.com/
1028 Busse Highway, Park Ridge, IL 60068
Building Energy Simulation and Analysis
List Administrator for 90.1, GPC18 and BLDG-SIM


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