Hi Arpan,
I apologize for the late response. To be honest, we coded the present version of Honeybee in a manner that is not too friendly to the insertion of new building programs and this is something that we intend to make better in the revision of honeybee that is currently happening and the new Honeyb…. This is not to say that you could not add new building programs in the present Honeybee. Just that it would be difficult and you might have better progress with an alternative method until the new API is ready.
As such, it is probably most helpful for me to explain how to create/assign a new building program with as few components as possible. All building programs are essentially defined only by schedules and loads. Therefore, you can effectively change the program of any HBzone with just 2 Honeybee components: “Honeybee_Set EnergyPlus Zone Loads” and “Honeybee_Set EnergyPlus Zone Schedules”.
The loads are straightforward to set if you know them and it is usually the definition of schedules which is more difficult. This said, you will get a lot of help with generating new schedules thanks to the “Honeybee_Annual Schedule” component and the “Honeybee_Daily Schedule” that Antonello recently added to Honeybee. Notably, these components output schedIDFText, which you can either internalize in a GH component and connect to the “Honeybee_Add to EnergyPlus Library” in any GH definition and you will have those schedules available without the need for the schedule generating component. Alternatively, you can copy/paste the schedIDFText into the userCustomEPLibrar.idf to have it automatically available whenever you load up Honeybee. In this way, all that you have to do is plug the name of the schedule into the “Honeybee_Set EnergyPlus Zone Schedules” component without a ton of schedule-generating components in everyone’s definitions.
Antonello has an example file up for his components but it is a bit old at this point.
I will post an example file tomorrow about how to use the schedIDFText since this has become a critical part of how I am defining new building programs in my office.
Hope this is enough to get you started.
-Chris