What batch pre/post processing tools are there for EnergyPlus?

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Hayes, below is a brief summery of how you could do this in PAT.

Below is a screenshot of PAT with an OpenStudio measure and two EnergyPlus measures. Among other things, the first measure associates an epw file with model. In this use case it is only useful for the epw, because the changes made in the actual model will be overwritten by the next measure. This isn't published yet but I can email a copy to you.

The next screenshot shows a measure I made as a proof of concept that lets you inject geometry from an OSM file into an external IDF file. The external IDF file is then fed into the run workflow in place of the IDF generated by OpenStudio. If you don't check the box to use the OSM geometry, then the result is passing the entire un-touched external IDF into the workflow. This measure is on BCL

If your locations are different enough then you probably want to make a simple EnergyPlus measure to update your design day information, maybe along with water main and ground temps. Or if you have changed these elsewhere, you can make design alternatives where you pair the correct IDF up with correct epw. I showed the PV measure in the workflow just an example. You could replace this measure with one that alters site information stored within the IDF file.

This same workflow would work fine on the Analysis Framework spreadsheet, but with that or even with EC2 in PAT you do need to make some minor alterations. The measures are pointing to local files on my computer. When the measures run on the cloud, it won't see those files. The best way to solve that would be to create a "resources" folder within the measure for any files you might refer to. If the files are within the measure they would go up to the severs and would be available when the measures are run. The Xcel EDA Tarrif measure demonstrates this.

Are you looking to actually run the simulations on your Mac or do you just want a Mac client to run simulations elsewhere, e.g., on the cloud?

Either way, JEPlus will do this. And it's a Java application so it will run on Macs or pretty much anything else (Raspberry Pi?). You could try OpenStudio, specifically the new Analysis Framework which is spreadsheet driven and will run things locally or on EC2. OpenStudio has the advantage of supporting "higher-order" measures in addition to simpler parametrics like weather files. Another option is the new web-based framework Apidae (apidaelabs.net).

I am not sure what else is available for Macs. There are probably more web-based options. Perhaps others will chime in.

I have used OpenStudio's low level IDF Workspace methods called from a series of ruby scripts (see 179d calculator). For a large study and if you don't want any sort of GUI involved, it works pretty well. The ruby bindings i OpenStudio are powerful way to leverage ruby language. With IDF Workspace methods, you can work with any IDF you may have created elsewhere and are not limited to those parts of EnergyPlus that OpenStudio has flushed out for use with its GUIs. It is pretty much brute force when it comes to modifying IDF objects at this lowest level, but it isn't difficult if you know exactly what you want in the IDF. There is a way to call a run manager from the scripts to help manage queuing up and executing all the simulations. You can query the sqlite database to collect results.

For EnergyPlus output processing, when I need to gather information from tabular reports from a lot of files, I use the current XML output option:

OutputControl:Table:Style,
    XMLandHTML:               !- Column Separator

and a Python script called epXML2CSV.py that reads the XML output from every file in a folder and creates a CSV file that can then be imported into a spreadsheet program like Excel. It reads only parts of the tabular report that you want based on list in a text files. The script and example file are at:

link to epXML2CSV GitHub repo

Suggestions on how to improve the script are welcome.

The EP-Launch "Group of Input Files" tab can be used to set this up very easily, but that is Windows-only.

I am using a tool named Smart-Energy.It is developed by ISHRAE (Indian Society of Heating refrigeration & air conditioning engineers).It gives you different graphical reports based on the results generated by energy plus some of them are like

Monthly analysis graphical reports
1. Zone total internal latent heat gain
2. Zone total internal heat gain 3. Zone sensible cooling rate
4. Zone sensible heating rate 5. DX coil total cooling rate
6. Heating coil rate 7. DX Coil total cooling energy
8. Fan electric Consumption 9. Window heat gain energy 10. Window heat loss energy 11. Zone transmitted solar energy 12. Sunlit graph

Hourly analysis graphical reports

1. Zone outdoor temperature
2. Zone outdoor relative humdity
3. Zone mean air temperature
4. Zone mean radiant temperature
5. Zone air relative humidity
6. Zone air humidity ratio
7. Zone people sensible heat gain
8. Zone people latent heat gain
9. Zone equipment total heat gain
10. Zone light total heat gain
11. Zone total internal latent heat gain
12. Zone total internal heat gain
13. Zone sensible cooling rate
14. Zone sensible heating rate
15. DX coil total cooling rate
16. Heating coil rate
17. Fan electric Consumption
18. Windiw heat gain energy
19. Window heat loss energy
20. Zone transmited solar energy

288 hours (21st of every month) analysis graphical reports 1. Zone outdoor temperature
2. Zone outdoor relative humdity 3. Zone mean air temperature
4. Zone mean radiant temperature 5. Zone air relative humidity
6. Zone air humidity ratio 7. Zone people sensible heat gain
8. Zone people latent heat gain 9. Zone equipment total heat gain
10. Zone light total heat gain 11. Zone total internal latent heat gain
12. Zone total internal heat gain 13. Zone sensible cooling rate
14. Zone sensible heating rate 15. DX coil total cooling rate
16. Heating coil rate 17. DX Coil total cooling energy
18. Fan electric Consumption 19. Window heat gain energy 20. Window heat loss energy 21. Zone transmitted solar energy