Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
The BND (Branch Node Details) output file created by EnergyPlus contains information for nodes, branches, and other model components related to fluid flow. You can read information about its contents here. To answer your main question, this BND file can only be written by the EnergyPlus engine when you simulate an IDF -- there is no PreProcess or PostProcess tool bundled with EnergyPlus that just does this functionality.
For more information, this BND output file is what EnergyPlus uses to generate the HVAC diagrams shown in the SVG output file. This specific step is done by default when you simulate an IDF in EP-Launch, but you could use the HVAC-Diagram.exe PostProcess tool to create this SVG diagram from a BND output file. You can read more about this in an Unmet Hours post here.
For any IDF, the BND output file doesn't change whether you simulate sizing/design days or annual periods -- the branch node details are the same for either case. So, what you could do is either simulate a single sizing/design day or simulate a one-day simulation with an EPW file instead of an annual simulation. This will be the quickest way to have EnergyPlus finish a simulation and create the BND file for you to use.
