Number of surfaces in OSM and IDF files
To whom it may concern,
I am modeling a one floor office building with five zones and a plenum in OpenStudio. I am relying on an IDF file in order to build up an OSM file by copying characteristics such as construction name, zone name and so forth. I realized that the IDF file has 12 wall surfaces (considering exterior and interior) in total. But, each space on the OpenStudio file has one exterior wall and 3 interior walls. It seems that the number of surfaces will be simplified once the OSM file is exported to IDF. Do I need to reduce the number once the IDF is created? Or is the reduction of the wall surfaces before exporting the OSM to IDF? Any comments will be highly appreciated!
Kind regards,
José Luis Bermúdez Alcocer, Ph.D.
I would only expect the geometry in resulting IDF to be different from the OSM if you are combing multiple spaces into a single zone, fo example if you combined the 5 zones into one, which I wouldn't suggest. Also note that if your IDF is of a current version o OpenStudio you can import the geometry and constructions instead of recreating them. It also surprising me that a 6 zone (5 + plenum) just has 12 wall surfaces if you are counting interior and exterior. Typically If a core and perimeter zone model I would expect 4 walls per zone for 24 total walls.