Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
DesignBuilder has included the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline systems in our HVAC library for some time, and now has an automated baseline building generation system that includes HVAC system generation as part of our new LEED module. I demonstrated this to the folks at our training in Colorado last week who were genuinely impressed. We'll be running webinars in the coming months to show this new functionality in more detail. You can sign up for our free beta testing program and access this functionality via our beta software downloads page.
You can't currently import .idf files directly into DesignBuilder, although we are working on it and hope to have that capability later this year. The best way to import a .idf file right now is to export it as a gbXML file from Open Studio (or Sketchup or any other tool with that ability) and then import it into DesignBuilder. Although the amount of HVAC data is limited in gbXML files, it is very quick to set up proposed and baseline EnergyPlus HVAC systems in DesignBuilder.
