We are a Design/Build Contractor and normally use Hevacomp Design Database for steady state heat losses/gains. We are now looking at transitioning to Open Buildings Designer Energy Simulator.
Many, in fact probably most of our Projects involve light industrial buildings on business park developments, where we have two or more buildings with exactly the same fabric characteristics, design temperatures and floor levels, but different sizes and orientations, on the same Site.
How is this best dealt with in the folder structure of OBD? Can different Sites be created within one Project? Or would it be a case of different Buildings within one Site? Or would we need to create each individual building as a separate Workset?
The setup will be with the Projects saved to a shared network folder, which we have set up following the BIM Management 301 training video.
Hi Andrew,
Good morning, would be happy to assist with this. Sorry for the slightly delayed reply, this somehow slipped my attention on Friday.
Once in the software you should find the workflows in Energy Simulator for tracing and modelling buildings is very similar to those in Hevacomp, for example, only one Site can be specified in Energy Sim, as the site properties are basically the Building Data properties you will be familiar with from Hevacomp, ie:
So, largely speaking, you could easily employ much the same workflows as you did before in Hevacomp. However the new software opens up a few new options for you in relation to this that you may wish to consider:
1. Multiple models in one Workset - the building data for a DGN building model such as fabric/weather data etc is saved in the relevant Workset, so you could easily create multiple DGN models in that Workset. These DGN's exist independently within the same Workset. (Note: results for all DGNs will be placed in the same Results folder in this case, so this may not be ideal for running PartL submissions)
2. Template Workset - if you wished to keep everything separate, you could create a new Workset for each building. When doing so, you can select a Template Workset to duplicate any custom data you may have set up already in other Worksets. Please see:Template Project for Custom Construction Types - OpenBuildings | AECOsim | Speedikon Wiki - OpenBuildings | AECOsim | Speedikon - Bentley Communities
Hope that helps, if you need anything else let me know.
Shane Regan | Principle Building Performance Support EngineerHevacomp to OpenBuildings - A complete guide for every user | Bentley Communities
Answer Verified By: Shane Regan