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Hi everyone,

I have a building model with a column heater in the middle of the room. This heater blocks the radiative heat exchange between two opposite walls. There are two ways to model it: 1) Using EnergyPlus' default view factors, 2) Using user-defined view factors.

1. If I use the default option, how will EnergyPlus calculate the view factors? I know EnergyPlus uses the ratio of the area of a surface to the total area of all receiving surfaces as the view factor. However, if there is a block in the middle, how will EnergyPlus calculate this?

2. If I use user-defined view factors, in each ZoneProperty:UserViewFactors:BySuraceName object, you can input at most 500 view factors. Since my model has a complicated wall composition, I will have more than 500 view factors. How should I handle this?

Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

I have a building model with a column heater in the middle of the room. This heater blocks the radiative heat exchange between two opposite walls. There are two ways to model it: 1) Using EnergyPlus' default view factors, 2) Using user-defined view factors.

1. If I use the default option, how will EnergyPlus calculate the view factors? I know EnergyPlus uses the ratio of the area of a surface to the total area of all receiving surfaces as the view factor. However, if there is a block in the middle, how will EnergyPlus calculate this?

2. If I use user-defined view factors, in each ZoneProperty:UserViewFactors:BySuraceName object, you can input at most 500 view factors. Since my model has a complicated wall composition, I will have more than 500 view factors. How should I handle this?

Thanks a lot!