Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] Re: E+ Software Limitations: (Run-time Error '7': Out of memory)

Hisham,

Maybe if you have a little of time this would be a good opportunity to try out the IDF+ editor that has been announced by creator Matt Doiron on this very group last November?

I'm not sure how functional it would be for you, but I'm just assuming it at least doesn't suffer from the same memory allocation problems as it was rewritten in Python. Maybe Matt can comment himself?

Release message on E+ support group

BitBucket repository for IDF+

Just an idea...

Best,
Julien

--
Julien Marrec, EBCP, BPI MFBA
Energy&Sustainability Engineer
T: +33 6 95 14 42 13

LinkedIn (en) : www.linkedin.com/in/julienmarrec
LinkedIn (fr) : www.linkedin.com/in/julienmarrec/fr

2015-01-11 15:41 GMT+01:00 weilix88@xxxxxxxxx [EnergyPlus_Support] <EnergyPlus_Support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

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Dear Hisham,

I had same problem before. This limitation is not from EnergyPlus v8.1, because there is no lines of code on their published source code indicates this limitation. However, I do suspect it is from the IDF Editor which comes with the EnergyPlus v8.1 software package.

Normally, when we open the idf file in IDF Editor, the Editor will firstly indexing all the inputs, put them in an internal data structure and map the data structure to IDF Editor interface based on the .idd file. Therefore, when there is a huge idf file, the IDF Editor may have memory overload issue. This issue is caused by the current IDF Editor's memory management system. It is not depend on how much memory available on your computer. (Please correct me if I am wrong)

Since the IDF Editor code is not public, we can not fix it from the root. However, there are several way to walk around it.

1. If you are comfortable working on Text Editor (such as notepad++) you will not need to worry about this error.

2. Another option is to clean the DB exported IDF file. Usually, there will be a lot redundant schedules exported from DB. Particularly for a huge model like yours, the number of repeated schedules could be more than 3000-4000. You can try to open it again once you cleaned your idf file.

3. For your situation, you can export the System-Removed IDF file, open it, and sort it. Sorting is a hidden function in IDF Editor. First, make sure your idf file has script"!Option-SortedOrder" on the top of the file, then open the idf file in the IDF Editor, create an empty object (I usually create a new version object), then delete it. Afterward, save the file, and open the idf file in any text editor. Once the idf file is sorted, the sorted part seems taking less memory to index. Therefore, you can add your HVAC system to the sorted idf file via either a text editor or IDF Editor without encountering the memory error.

Hope this will be helpful!

Weili Xu