[Bldg-sim] One model

Rob Guglielmetti rpg at rumblestrip.org
Wed Mar 11 20:11:45 PDT 2009


On Mar 11, 2009, at 6:09 PM, Ross Harding wrote:

> The ultimate goal for us would be to use one model for daylight and  
> energy models, but I haven’t found that quite that simple as most  
> software requires varying drawing techniques.

Amen brother!  Another issue is that while the energy model has to  
include the total building -- all spaces and systems -- to be a  
complete picture of the energy use, a Radiance-based daylight model  
does not necessarily require all the spaces to be modeled  
simultaneously.  Indeed, the accuracy of the ambient calculation is  
directly affected by the maximum size of the scene, and so conducting  
a simultaneous daylight simulation of an entire building at an  
acceptably rigorous ambient resolution can be -- is generally -- time- 
prohibitive.

As mentioned in a recent thread on this list, Thomas Bleicher's  
"su2rad" plugin for SketchUp can export a SU model to Radiance format  
and there is also an E+ plugin to allow one to use the same SU model  
for E+ analysis; in theory, these three components (SketchUp, su2rad  
and the E+ plugin) allow for a "single model" approach to energy and  
daylight modeling. However, because the su2rad exporter wants to take  
the entire model and create a single Radiance scene description, that  
creates the aforementioned problem of the ambient calculation getting  
out of hand fairly quickly.  I suppose through intelligent layering  
and model structuring, one could create a model that could be exported  
to Radiance in "space components", but I'm not sure if this is  
compatible with the E+ plugin's layering/model organization  
requirements.

- Rob Guglielmetti
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