Is it possible to export the area of objects (polygons) directly with the openstudio plugin in sketchup?

asked 2016-04-25 08:18:35 -0500

vritter
31 ●1

updated 2016-05-03 03:47:46 -0500

Julien Marrec

29032 ●85 ●74 http://www.effibem.com/

Being a beginner with openstudio plugin in sketchup, I wonder if it is possible to export not only the vertex of wall, roofs etc but directly their areas. I noticed that the TRNSYS plug-in (which is based on openstudio) displays as info the area of objects. However, the idf of both plug-ins only give vertex(es). I am aware of how to calculate the area of a polygons (thanks to this) but would prefer to skip this step and directly use the information.

answered 2016-04-25 11:04:35 -0500

David Goldwasser

20295 ●94 ●14 http://www.openstudio.net/

There may be native SketchUp plugins that already do this, but if you specifically wanted to use the OpenStudio API you could write a user script in SketchUp, or a measure that could be used outside of SketchUp with this code in it.

model.getPlanarSurfaces.each do |surface|
  puts "#{surface.name},#{surface.netArea}"
end

model.getPlanarSurfaces gets all surfaces in the model (base surfaces, fenestration, shading, interior partition). And using .netArea instead of .grossArea deducts the area of any sub-surfaces from its parent base surface. You could get other information like surface type, construction, etc. If you do this in SketchUp you could just copy the text out of the ruby console into Excel, or if you want to you can have the script/measure write to a CSV file. There is an example measure on the BCL that Exports Schedules to CSV you could use as a guide.

If you only care about exterior surfaces, there are a few other options. The standard OpenStudio report lists total area of exterior surfaces by construction, and also a count of those surfaces.

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The standard EnergyPlus report goes further to list all exterior surfaces individually.

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Thanks David,

the standard Energyplus export via html helped a lot. Only downside is that I was not able to sort building components by zone. It seems to me that they get listed just as they appear in the idf.