Revision history [back]

Not definitive answers - just a bunch of (hopefully useful) hints.

There are a number of OpenStudio developers/modellers here on UMH with considerable experience when it comes to small scale housing. Yet I suspect you may need to narrow down a bit more your needs in order to get (more useful) pointers, references, etc. For instance, are you looking more at housing stock assessments (e.g. utility?), or instead a handful of templates for professional practice (e.g. AEC firm)? You state that most of the inputs would be fixed, while your 2nd question on geometry and SketchUp suggests housing layout may vary (considerably?), e.g. size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, number of stories, with/without basement, context such as shading from neighbouring vegetation and buildings? What else may vary (vs fixed inputs)?

If you're aiming at housing stock assessments, BEopt, HPXML and Resstock immediately come to mind. It's a deep dive and largely US-focused, yet there is a wealth of information (field data, methods) for anyone interested in automating housing assessments. If you need to work with custom geometry/layout, then BEopt/HPXML may not be as suitable, as discussed here. Yet I've often found it useful to consult the OSM generated by BEopt in such cases (see here), especially when starting out.

I suspect you're leaning more towards automatically populating custom OpenStudio housing models (custom, yet basic ... e.g. holding only geometry, spaces and spacetypes), with a handful of predefined loads/HVAC options/templates. The previous links still remain very useful in that regard, but a complete solution would require something akin to measures like this one or this one. You couldn't use these straight out of the box for housing of course, but they may nonetheless constitute good conceptual/procedural examples to adapt for your needs.

I frequently use SketchUp, especially for highly-articulated geometry (e.g. split levels, varying roof slopes, dormers, bay windows and niches). In simpler shoebox cases when/where dimensions may change (over many iterations), I often script a solution - more flexible. Others would turn to OpenStudio's FloorspaceJS solution.

Not definitive answers - just a bunch of (hopefully useful) hints.

There are a number of OpenStudio developers/modellers here on UMH with considerable experience when it comes to small scale housing. Yet I suspect you may need to narrow down a bit more your needs in order to get (more useful) pointers, references, etc. For instance, are you looking more at housing stock assessments (e.g. utility?), or instead a handful of templates for professional practice (e.g. AEC firm)? You state that most of the inputs would be fixed, while your 2nd question on geometry and SketchUp suggests housing layout may vary (considerably?), e.g. size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, number of stories, with/without basement, context such as shading from neighbouring vegetation and buildings? What else may vary (vs fixed inputs)?

If you're aiming at housing stock assessments, BEopt, HPXML and Resstock immediately come to mind. It's a deep dive and largely US-focused, yet there is a wealth of information (field data, methods) for anyone interested in automating housing assessments. If you need to work with custom geometry/layout, then BEopt/HPXML may not be as suitable, as discussed here. Yet I've often found it useful to consult the OSM generated by BEopt in such cases (see here), especially when starting out.

I suspect you're leaning more towards automatically populating custom OpenStudio housing models (custom, yet basic ... e.g. holding only geometry, spaces and spacetypes), with a handful of predefined loads/HVAC options/templates. The previous links still remain very useful in that regard, but a complete solution would require something akin to measures like this one or this one. You couldn't use these straight out of the box for housing of course, but they may nonetheless constitute good conceptual/procedural examples to adapt for your needs.

I frequently use SketchUp, especially for highly-articulated geometry (e.g. split levels, varying roof slopes, dormers, bay windows and niches). In simpler shoebox cases when/where dimensions may change (over many iterations), I often script a solution - more flexible. Others would turn to OpenStudio's FloorspaceJS solution.

Not definitive answers - just a bunch of (hopefully useful) hints.

There are a number of OpenStudio developers/modellers here on UMH with considerable experience when it comes to small scale housing. Yet I suspect you may need to narrow down a bit more your needs in order to get (more useful) pointers, references, etc. For instance, are you looking more at housing stock assessments (e.g. utility?), or instead a handful of templates for professional practice (e.g. AEC firm)? You state that most of the inputs would be fixed, while your 2nd question on geometry and SketchUp suggests housing layout may vary (considerably?), e.g. size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, number of stories, with/without basement, context such as shading from neighbouring vegetation and buildings? What else may vary (vs fixed inputs)?

If you're aiming at housing stock assessments, BEopt, HPXML and Resstock immediately come to mind. It's a deep dive and largely US-focused, yet there is a wealth of information (field data, methods) for anyone interested in automating housing assessments. If you need to work with custom geometry/layout, then BEopt/HPXML may not be as suitable, as discussed here. Yet I've often found it useful to consult the OSM generated by BEopt in such cases (see here), especially when starting out.

EDIT: Other noteworthy packages to consider would be OpenStudio-Standards and related ComStock. A very naive distinction between BEopt/HPXML vs OpenStudio-Standards is the former "focuses on individual residential dwelling units – either a single-family detached building, or a single unit of a single-family attached or multifamily building" (see Scope (Dwelling Units) here), while the latter targets whole buildings (e.g. midrise and high-rise apartment buildings), including their non-residential space/requirements (e.g. common areas, elevators). So depending on the scope of your needs, you may end up leaning against one approach over the other.

I suspect you're leaning more towards automatically populating custom OpenStudio housing models (custom, yet basic ... e.g. holding only geometry, spaces and spacetypes), with a handful of predefined loads/HVAC options/templates. The previous links still remain very useful in that regard, but a complete solution would require something akin to measures like this one or this one. You couldn't use these straight out of the box for housing of course, but they may nonetheless constitute good conceptual/procedural examples to adapt for your needs.

I frequently use SketchUp, especially for highly-articulated geometry (e.g. split levels, varying roof slopes, dormers, bay windows and niches). In simpler shoebox cases when/where dimensions may change (over many iterations), I often script a solution - more flexible. Others would turn to OpenStudio's FloorspaceJS solution.

Not definitive answers - just a bunch of (hopefully useful) hints.

There are a number of OpenStudio developers/modellers here on UMH with considerable experience when it comes to small scale housing. Yet I suspect you may need to narrow down a bit more your needs in order to get (more useful) pointers, references, etc. For instance, are you looking more at housing stock assessments (e.g. utility?), or instead a handful of templates for professional practice (e.g. AEC firm)? You state that most of the inputs would be fixed, while your 2nd question on geometry and SketchUp suggests housing layout may vary (considerably?), e.g. size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, number of stories, with/without basement, context such as shading from neighbouring vegetation and buildings? What else may vary (vs fixed inputs)?

If you're aiming at housing stock assessments, BEopt, HPXML and Resstock immediately come to mind. It's a deep dive and largely US-focused, yet there is a wealth of information (field data, methods) for anyone interested in automating housing assessments. If you need to work with custom geometry/layout, then BEopt/HPXML may not be as suitable, as discussed here. Yet I've often found it useful to consult the OSM generated by BEopt in such cases (see here), especially when starting out.

EDIT: Other noteworthy packages to consider would be OpenStudio-Standards and related ComStock. A very naive distinction between BEopt/HPXML vs OpenStudio-Standards is the former "focuses on individual residential dwelling units – either a single-family detached building, or a single unit of a single-family attached or multifamily building" (see Scope (Dwelling Units) here), while the latter targets whole buildings (e.g. midrise and high-rise apartment buildings), including their non-residential space/requirements (e.g. common areas, elevators). So depending on the scope of your needs, you may end up leaning against one approach over the other.

I suspect you're leaning more towards automatically populating custom OpenStudio housing models (custom, yet basic ... e.g. holding only geometry, spaces and spacetypes), with a handful of predefined loads/HVAC options/templates. The previous links still remain very useful in that regard, but a complete solution would require something akin to measures like this one or this one. You couldn't use these straight out of the box for housing of course, but they may nonetheless constitute good conceptual/procedural examples to adapt for your needs.

I frequently use SketchUp, especially for highly-articulated geometry (e.g. split levels, varying roof slopes, dormers, bay windows and niches). In simpler shoebox cases when/where dimensions may change (over many iterations), I often script a solution - more flexible. Others would turn to OpenStudio's FloorspaceJS solution.

EDIT (based on your follow-up comment): OK, sounds more like a (new) OpenStudio Measure that would automatically assess (local) building energy code compliance, i.e. performance approach (not prescriptive requirements). Here a few questions (out of possibly many) that may help you (and others) to further narrow down measure requirements:

Q1: EUI or reference/baseline -based target? I suspect the latter (à la 90.1), as you mention predefined loads and schedules (although I've come across EUI-based approaches that hard-set loads and schedules in the proposed design model). If it's reference/baseline -based, then such a measure would be conceptually closer to OpenStudio-Standards or this aforementioned measure. If it's EUI-based, then it's usually simpler to automatically set the target (although some EUI-based codes can become quite finicky when it comes to modulating targets, e.g. based on the size of the building, mixed-use or not).

Q2: Is this local energy code looking at whole building energy use (including HVAC, SHW, renewables, etc.), or is it more loads -focused (e.g. TEDI, BBio) ... or a combination of both? Any other metrics involved (e.g. carbon, thermal resilience)?

Q3: What about QAQC? Something you may want to consider, namely if working within a large team (i.e. many modellers) or if importing 3rd-party OSMs (e.g. BIM-exported). With the latter, you can come across a lot of garbage models ...

... I could go on.

Regarding potential developers, I suggest going through contributors to OpenStudio-Standards (here) or HPXML (here). I'm guessing +90% work for US (in some cases Canadian) labs/agencies, so less likely to help you out directly as 3rd-party developers. Yet in both cases there are a handful of private-sector expert consultants (i.e. contributors) who may be interested. If it becomes tough for you to isolate/contact them, try getting into contact with any of the top 4 NREL contributors - hopefully they may suggest a few names for you.