GBxml import DB file not working

Hi everyone,
I am currently working on an energy model for an office building. The original model was done with Design Builder, but now I would like to test diferent options and parameters with Honeybee.
I have no problems importing the model, but when I run the simulation I only obtain solar heat gains and interior comfort metrics, no cooling or heting outputs. Does anybody know what is happening? Why am I not obtaining any results for cooling or heating for these zones?

Thanks,
Julio
Import GBxml simulation not working.gh (441.3 KB)
OfficeBuilding_test.xml (1.4 MB)


hi there,

I also have the same issue. I think this might be caused by the HVAC not being set for your model.

This is my understanding of the issue, as I have gone through this previously and didn’t find a solution. I hope someone could confirm or correct me as I am relatively new and still learning ladybug tools, energy/daylight simulations, and Rhino/grasshopper.

If you build your model in grasshopper/Rhino you would use the “HB room from solid” and that would add a default ideal air system when “conditioned_” is set to true:

however, I am not sure how to work around this to work for gbXML models in grasshopper as this component doesn’t accept gbxml models.

I hope someone would be able to point out what are we missing to complete the gbXML energy modelling workflow.

Regards

Hi @omarhamed and @Julioamodia89 ,

Yes, we cannot import HVAC systems from gbXML (or OSM/IDF for that matter). You’ll see that this table in the Pollination Docs explains which things can be imported with the Ladybug Tools core libraries from various file formats.

HVAC systems are just very complex and practically every energy modeling software out there is going to make you re-assign HVAC if you are coming over from another platform. But we can usually do a good job importing geometry and most other properties like constructions (a long as those properties are formatted in a way that OpenStudio/Honeybee like).

But you two are not the first to encounter this and the lack of a component that changes rooms from unconditioned to conditioned has presented some interoperability issues for us. If you give me to the end of the day, I’ll add a component to the development version of the plugin that allows you to set whether a given room is conditioned or not. It will essentially just assign an ideal air system if one isn’t already assigned and then you can use the other components under the HVAC tab if you want to change this to a more detailed HVAC type.

Also note that you will need to have thermostat setpoints assigned to your rooms in order to get heating and cooling. So I recommend checking to make sure that setpoints are being imported on your models using the workflow described in this tutorial video. If they aren’t assigned, you’ll have to reassign them using a component like this one.

1 Like

Dear @chris,

This would be amazing. thank you for the quick response.

for me, using the honeybee_energy SDK I was able to do what was needed for the task in python, and to some extent, I am very happy with my python workflow.

Thank you,
Omar.

1 Like

That’s also what I have been doing when I encountered these cases. But my rule of thumb has been, if I have to re-create a custom GHPython component for myself more than twice, then it should probably be an official component. I just merged a component to set the conditioned property into the development version of the plugin:

You should be able to get it on your end with the LB Versioner in ~20 minutes. After that, you can set your gbXML-imported rooms to be conditioned using the following:

2 Likes

Amazing job @chris.
Thank you for your quick response and solution.