Parametric Analysis Tool in SI

answered 2014-12-08 08:56:54 -0500

David Goldwasser

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

updated 2015-04-06 14:50:38 -0500

macumber

11918 ●22 ●21 http://automaticmagic.com/

OpenStudio does have an SI/IP switch for model input but currently all output is in SI. In the OpenStudio application simulation results are shown using a reporting measure that makes an HTML file. It would be very easy for someone to update those to be SI instead of IP. Here is a link](https://bcl.nrel.gov/node/39420) to the standard report on BCL. Unfortunately it isn't so easy for PAT. We do eventually want to have customizable PAT, but I don't have a timeline for either that or native unit switching for reporting measures.

Here is one work around. While our reporting measures generally write to HTML, you can write to csv and other formats. You could write a reporting measure to gather what you want from each simulation and then combine then in Excel to create a custom analysis report.

Updated content below:

I should add that in general, writing a measure in SI will actually be easier than in IP. The OSM model, just like an IDF model stores everything in SI units. So when you see a measure with IP argument units and also IP output, we had to do unit conversion on both ends of the measure. It needs to be SI during the body of the measure because that's what the API expects you to pass in for an object value, and that is what will be returned if you do something like building.floorArea is an SI value.

You will see a lot of code like what is shown below. You could remove these if you want to stay in IP throughout the entire process. This page shows some example unit strings for the convert method.

value_ip = OpenStudio::convert(value_si,"m^2","ft^2").get

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Comments

Perfect David! Thank you!

I'm beginning to study how to write measures and I hope help with these questions.

Thanks!

Geraldo Pithon ( 2014-12-08 17:26:28 -0500 )edit

David/Dan. Do you have an example reporting measure that writes energy summary results for PAT simulations?

DavidReddy ( 2015-07-14 19:47:26 -0500 )edit

Any reporting measure will work, the one David linked to above is a good one. You can access the html output files by going to the directory structure or by right clicking on a design alternative in the results tab.

macumber ( 2015-07-15 08:51:06 -0500 )edit

Thanks Dan, but I incorrectly worded my question: Do you have an example of a reporting measure that writes csv format energy summary results from simulations? Ideally, a CSV file of key annual energy results (kWh, kW, therm, etc); one set of model results per line/row. This is the format output by eQUEST in its 'Parms.csv' file. It would be useful to create a report that is in the same or similar format so we can more quickly adapt internal results viewing/reporting spreadsheets to OS/E+ output. Just wanted to ask in case something has already been developed.

DavidReddy ( 2015-07-15 10:12:31 -0500 )edit

Ah yes, this is the idea of running a measure on the entire PAT project right? We have discussed this but there aren't currently any plans to implement this. We will be reworking PAT in the upcoming year so this might be on the table.

macumber ( 2015-07-15 10:51:54 -0500 )edit

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