Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
I prefer a 4th option - Revit. There are two ways to do it in Revit, and I actually prefer the old method where you have to be very careful setting everything up, but you get a cleaner output IDF/gbXML. The newer method (now the default) does some weird discretion with diagonal lines which results in 'stairstepped' looking surfaces, which work fine, but can increase simulation time. Part of my reasoning there though is integration with the rest of the design process, but even still, I find building geometry in Revit to be more like building in the real world (here's a wall, and a floor, and a window, etc) while sketchup and other analytical oriented platforms think in terms of volumes and 2d surfaces.
Of your three options, DesignBuilding is my next preference, for similar reasons as it is more intuitive to me. Next is actually a weird 5th option - Using IES and then converting the geometry via a gbXML workflow or some GEM translator, and that' is just because I'm very familiar with IES. Clearly I just don't like Sketchup... I find it limiting and simple, so I try to avoid it.
