Creating Geometry for EnergyPlus

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As @mdahlhausen mentioned eppy, I thought I should add an answer here about geomeppy. While there's no GUI, geomeppy is another way to create EnergyPlus geometry using Python, built on top of eppy.

You can use the idf.add_block(...) function to create block with perimeters as simple or complex as you like, and move them to position adjacent to, above or below other blocks using idf.translate((x, y[, z])), idf.rotate(angle[, anchor]). Surface intersection and matching is done with idf.intersect_match().

It can also read in the geometry from an existing EnergyPlus IDF - this is the SurfaceTest.idf example file.

And being based on Eppy, you can also manipulate EnergyPlus objects using the standard Eppy functions.

I've been working on improving the tutorials recently, and fixed a couple of bugs along the way. Feature requests, bug reports, and pull requests are all welcomed!

The v2.0+ series of OpenStudio is really buggy with SketchUp.

For now, I'd suggest using Sketchup 2016 with OS v1.14 for geometry. The OpenStudio sketchup user-scripts are really helpful for quickly making geometry, and you can easily write your own scripts for common functions.

Honeybee is also good for quick shoebox geometry.

OpenStudio is an API for EnergyPlus. So even if you don't use OpenStudio directly, you can still use it to edit EnergyPlus files. There are other EnergyPlus APIs as well - eppy, Params, jEplus.

The Ladybug Tools and NREL teams are both working on geometry replacements to SketchUp, and EnergyPlus is moving to JSON format, so your preferred EnergyPlus toolchain may look very different in a year or two.

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.

Euclid will create geometry for energyplus as .Idf file while OS sketchup plugin will create geometry for OS application in . osm format. You can translate the resulting. osm file infto. Idf file in the OS application. The obvious advantage of OS is the ability to use the extra features of the sketchup plugin as you already found and the visual features of tge OS like plant loops and air loops visual editing. The limits that OS impose are mianly around features existing in Energy Plus which are not realized in OS. One other thing is the steep learning curve of OS with somewhat lacking documentation compared to Energy Plus

For me definitely Ladybug Tools (mostly Honeybee for energy modelling) and Pollination these days. You can import/export .idf and gbXML files, although the ecosystem is using the HBJSON model schema.

The Rhino license is not free, but it is perpetual compared to Sketchup's subscription system, and it is a pretty robust modelling interface with tons of control over geometry, and built-in visual scripting interface (Grasshopper), that lets you parameterise the models in a pretty flexible manner.

It is way more comprehensive and robust now, than simple shoebox models, a lot happened since the previous reply above.