How to Fix Negative Zone Volume
I see that there are already two other posts on this issue, but unless I missed something, I didn't find a solution/workaround for this warning.
** Warning ** Indicated Zone Volume <= 0.0 for Zone=THERMAL ZONE 1
** ~~~ ** The calculated Zone Volume was=-3.18
** ~~~ ** The simulation will continue with the Zone Volume set to 10.0 m3.
** ~~~ ** ...use Output:Diagnostics,DisplayExtraWarnings; to show more details on individual zones.
It seems that the reason that the zone volume is calculated as a negative number, is due to the direction in which one of the volume's surfaces was drawn. How do I ensure that the vertices are drawn counterclockwise in Sketchup?
Edit: Other two posts on this issue:negative zone volume and total wall area by ashrae 90.1 definition and Why a negative zone volume?.
@IanVG are you working with SketchUp through the OpenStudio plugin or the Euclid plugin for EnergyPlus?
I am working with the SketchUp through the OpenStudio plugin!
I am having a very frustrating time replicating the zone, but the short-term fix is to select all the surfaces in the space/whole space and then use the Reverse Face commands. I thought that the the top surface being assigned the Floor type and the bottom surface being assigned RoofCeiling was the root of my problem with the negative zone volume calculation - it is not. I also thought it has something to do with the way I am modeling the surfaces - it does not. To be continued in further comments.
It has something to do with the direction that the walls face. Coming from a mechanical engineering background, it's like there is a vector that points normal from the cross-product of two of the vectors that make up the wall face. If that vector points inward into the space, that indicates that the face that should be facing to the 'outside' is facing towards the 'inside.' You should make sure that the wall vector points to outside the space. To be continued.
Playing around with the face vector direction (by using the Reverse Face command, I found that just one face pointing outwards, actually fixes this issue. All the other wall faces can be pointing inwards towards to the space, but the volume will still be calculated correctly. If there is a tool to methodically address this issue, I have not found it yet. In addition, to address the output diagnostics for looking at the vertex orientation, I found that the Info Tool in the OS App can help you find the vertices fairly easily.