Coming back to teach the same class - the next year. In this I am focused on students learning how to script by mining the LBT sample files, and my own example file.
Last year, this was symptomatic of the problems that arise from using the EnergyPlus example file dataset as a source of examples to learn from. I plan to avoid the issue this year.
I had hoped to encourage the students to take apart the EnergyPlus sample files they were importing into LBT once they were running. However, far too many of them would run in E+ but not in LBT/Open Studio. Sometimes the errors were material properties (e.g. thickness) which generated an OS error, but ran fine in E+. Apart from AFN, there was IceStorage, Night Ventilation, Earth Tubes, HAMT modelling, Solar collectors, Photovoltaics, Trombe Walls, and so on and on. The goal was enabling them to see how to look beyond LBT for what they might learn about the Energy Conservation Measures they read about in books.
Just recording for posterity that the apparently sensible “Import IDF” run and graph option after selecting a promising model from the 100s of E+ example files seems like a dead end…
M