Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
Hey, thanks for trying this out! The images produced by genImages() are purely for information and debugging purposes only, and even when debug mode is off, the basic images are of the space(s) in the shades up configuration only, sorry. The debug mode images are for each window group and each shade condition, but they are for checking that the materials are properly set up such that the illuminance is calculated for that window group/shade condition only; i.e., they do not show the total space illuminance. For more bad news, the time of day is currently hard-coded to 09:00, here.
I apologize these outputs are minimal and of fixed conditions. If you enable debug mode, a lot of the individual window group setup files and outputs are saved, and you could go in and make your own renderings fairly quickly, much the way the measure does them. The measure actually makes a few sample CIE clear/sunny skies (for 09:00, 12:00 and 15:00) and saves them in the output, right here. I just checked in a change that saves the 'model.rad' file, which is a useful "collector file" for the Radiance model octrees (depending on your current OS version, the measure only saves it when in debug mode or not at all, which is stupid), but you can build up the representative octrees without model.rad. Also note that simply doing a rendering at the settings used by genImages() will give you a picture that sorta looks ok, but should by no means be relied upon for photometric truth. The ambient parameters and even the direct calculation is not exercised enough to give you any reasonable values, so I wouldn't bother to overlay any illuminance isocontours on the things. Simulationist beware, as they say. I'm sure someone says that.
In short, the images are for sanity checking your model translation. If you wish to verify the shade actuation, enable debug mode and review the individual window group output data and/or the shade schedule files, whose contents look like this:
[hour],[window_illuminance],[shade_setpoint],[shade_condition]
Where shade_condition is 0 for shades down and 1 is shades up for the timestep.
Does all that mess make sense?
