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Openstudio's multi-story Office Building

asked 2021-03-27 23:02:42 -0600

Leon1das's avatar

updated 2021-04-06 15:32:34 -0600

Hi I am relatively new to Openstudio's and have been tasked to render a 20 story office building as part of my final uni piece as well as simulate its daily operations. I ask if anyone has tips or advice on undergoing the most effective method for simulating a "multi-story building"??

I have tried simulating such an environment but come to find FAILED simulation readings because of a lack of "construction name" to all surfaces present. Is there a way to automatically assign such names as opposed to renaming 600+ surfaces?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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answered 2021-03-29 03:06:39 -0600

updated 2021-03-29 03:07:12 -0600

If you want the short answer: Create (or Drag from Library) a Default Construction Set, and assign this construction set to your building on the Facility Tab.

Drag from Library:

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Assign to Building on Facility Tab

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If you want a better answer: I think you should probably take a step back and go back to basics. I recommend reading up the getting started tutorial here: https://openstudiocoalition.org/getti...

You probably should check out the concept of Inheritance too, so you understand whereto define your properties at the right level: https://nrel.github.io/OpenStudio-use...

Anyways: You should always try to define things at a higher level of inheritance to not repeat yourself. Let's assume you have a 20 story model, and we look at the Exterior wall construction A. Let's assume all of the building uses the same exact construction except: * The basement, which uses construction B * A stairwell, that spans all floors including basement, and uses construction S

You would define a DefaultConstructionSet that has all surface constructions in there (exterior wall, but also, floors, interior walls, etc). Assign this DefaultConstructionSet to the Building like shown above.

You would create a second DefaultConstructionSet for the basement, but only fill out the construction that differs, in our small example the Exterior Wall Construction set to B, the rest empty. You would assign this one to the Building Story that is the basement (you would need to make sure the Stories are properly defined though, that is all spaces of the basement are in the same Building Story).

You would finally create a third DefaultConstructionSet for the stairwell, putting the construction S for the Exterior Wall construction, and assign that to the SpaceType Stairwell (and make sure all your stairwell spaces have this space type assigned).

The inheritance tree would do the job to correctly assign the right constructions! If you take a basement wall surface:

  • If the basement wall has a hard assigned construction: it is used.
  • If not, if the space itself has a construction it is used
  • If not, if the space type itself has a construction, it is used. So if that surface is part of the Stairwell, it uses the stairwell construction
  • If not, it uses the Story construction. So in our case, it's guaranteed to stop here (unless it was the stairwell, where it would have stopped one step earlier)
  • (If not, it falls back to the Building-assigned construction.)
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Thank you for your advice, used the steps you outlined and its worked a treat!!! Really appreciate your help, thanks again.

Leon1das's avatar Leon1das  ( 2021-04-08 22:38:38 -0600 )edit

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Asked: 2021-03-27 23:02:42 -0600

Seen: 379 times

Last updated: Apr 08 '21