Energy+/HoneyBee Error: Zero or negative surface area

old forum
1

Hi everyone,
one of my colleagues wants to post a discussion but they didn’t accepted her here on the GrassHopper forum yet. I post the following for her so that you, brilliant minds, are able to start looking at it…
She will join the conversation as soon as they accept her.

Thanks in advance,
Claudio


Original post from Claudia:
Hi guys,
I´m new in this forum and I hope I can find here a solution of my problem.
I´m tring to do an energy simulation (and the next step would be the optimization with octopus) with honeybee and ladybug.
I´m analyzing a floor of 2600mq with more than 2/3 of external walls glazed. I´ve got also 174 fins along the perimeter.

The problem is that when I run the simulation I recive these errors for each window:

** Severe ** GetHTSubSurfaceData: Surface Openings have too much area for base surface=EEE8110BF0A843E9A620_9
** ~~~ ** Opening Surface creating error=GLZ_0_EEE8110BF0A843E9A620_9_A2E7F42406024C9A833A
** Severe ** GetSurfaceData: Zero or negative surface area[0.00000], Surface=EEE8110BF0A843E9A620_9

If i have understood well, according to .err file, the dimension of the window in rhino seems to be bigger then the wall. But it isn´t! i mean i´ve tryed also to put a frame to the windows or to scale them but i got the same results.
Do you know why or how i can solve it??

aaand it isn´t finished! even if i checked my Rhino with “SelCrv, SelBadObject,selLine…” and i got “only” 303 surfaces and 3 polysurfaces i still can´t find the degenerate surface for which i have these errors:

** Warning ** GetSurfaceData: There are 2 coincident/collinear vertices; These have been deleted unless the deletion would bring the number of surface sides < 3.
** ~~~ ** For explicit details on each problem surface, use Output:Diagnostics,DisplayExtraWarnings;
** Severe ** GetSurfaceData: There are 1 degenerate surfaces; Degenerate surfaces are those with number of sides < 3.
** ~~~ ** These surfaces should be deleted.
** ~~~ ** For explicit details on each problem surface, use Output:Diagnostics,DisplayExtraWarnings;
** Fatal ** GetSurfaceData: Errors discovered, program terminates.
…Summary of Errors that led to program termination:
… Reference severe error count=7
… Last severe error=GetSurfaceData: There are 1 degenerate surfaces; Degenerate surfaces are those with number of sides < 3.

Someone can help me? it´s three days that i´ve been struggling with this work, but still can´t find the solution :frowning:
Here i attach the rhino and gh file
Thanks a lot
Claudia

Floor.3dm (2.45 MB)
Floor.gh (631 KB)

2

Claudia,

Your issue is very clearly a geometry one and I can tell you precisely that it happens because your Honeybee Zone is not closed:

Zones must be closed volumes of air and so you can always tell if your model geometry is going to fail if your HBZone is not closed as you see in the image above. An easy way to find the problem spots of your model is to bake the zone and do a DupBorder command and this will show you all of the holes of your model:

It looks like you had a lot of window surfaces that were not coplanar with the walls. I deleted these windows and retraced the walls so your model is running fine now (see attached gh file), although the hundreds of surfaces means that it takes an hour to run. Anything that you can do to reduce the number of surfaces is going to help you a lot. EnergyPlus is not a program that you can simply throw any geometry into. Also, as a general note, EnergyPlus does not like it when you put window surfaces right up against the edge of the wall surface as you do here:

You have to leave some room between the window and the wall edge.

-Chris

Floor_CWM.gh (650 KB)

3

Hi Chris,

Thanks a lot for your quick answer!!

Now that i´ve been accepted i can directly write on this post :slight_smile:

I didn´t know that “EnergyPlus does not like when you put window surfaces right up against the edge of the wall surface”, so good to know for the future, thanks a lot.

I would like to ask you another thing: when i open your gh file i recive this message:

"IO generated 4 message, would you like to see them?", is this related maybe to different plugins you used that i haven´t installed yet? could you please tell me their name?

Thanks a lot again!!

All the best

Claudia

4

Claudia,

I did not add components from any other plugins. What do the messages say?

-Chris

5

Hi Chris,

Actually, I don´t know why, now seems to be ok and i haven´t received any message again!I´m really sorry for the inconvenience!

Anyway there´s still a “problem”…unfortunately i still get no results from this simulation because the “Run Energy Simulation” component gives me this error:

"This Simulation has not run correctly because of this severe error

****SevereProblem in interior solar distribution calculation (CHKBHS)"

What am i doing wrong? :frowning:

I saw a past discussion where you were recommending to run the simulation without interior reflections using the Energy Simulation Par component (am i right?), but i still get no results.

Thanks in advance

(Without your help my master thesis didn´t go forward so really thanks a lot!!)

Sincerely

Claudia

6

Chris,

I´ve solved the problem, it was my fault!

Thanks a lot for your support!

Claudia

7

Claudia,

Glad that you figured it out and that you found the discussion related to CHKBHS. For anyone following this thread, you can find CHKBHS answers here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/ladybug/forum/topics/interior-so…

For accurate sub-zone results, Claudia, I would usually recommend breaking up a geometry as complex as your building into several zones with air walls between them. Your current model will give you decently accurate values for your overall building loads, though.

-Chris

8

Chris,

I´m sorry to disturb you again, but i´ve still some problems with the windows.

I should work with them, changing their dimensions in order to get different % of opaque area (so i can start finally the optimizaiton), but i don´t know how to add windows or to scale the ones that i have because the times i´ve tryed i´ve always got open brep in the output of the “Honeybee add HBGlz” component :frowning:

Can you help me?

i attach you the rhino and grasshopper files again

Thanks a lot

Claudia

Floor.3dm (2.45 MB)
Floor_CWM.gh (650 KB)

9

Claudia,
As I stated earlier: An easy way to find the problem spots of your model is to bake the zone output from the addHBGlz component and do a DupBorder command on this baked geometry. This will show you all of the holes of your model.
-Chris

10

Hi Chris,

you were right sorry for asking you again the same question.

Anyway i´m tring to run a daylight simulation and i don´t know why for some reason only some windows are considered as radiance material (checked with the label zone surfaces component) while other windows are not counted.

I´ve also tried if it depends on the normals of the windows, using the flip component, but it doesn´t change.

Do you know why?

Have you got any suggestion?

Thanks a lot

Claudia

11

Claudia,
I am not sure if I am understanding your issue well but it looks like some of your windows are not perfectly coplanar with the wall surface. Generating your window surfaces by copying and using scale1D on the wall surface will help ensure that your geometry is correct. An easy way to check if surfaces are coplanar is by selecting both the wall and window and using the “intersect” command. If they are coplanar, you should see the window outlined with a curve.
-Chris