Trial / Demo
In the previous article, Part 1, I mentioned the three key lessons of ModelIT application. As basic as the ModelIT application sounds, it is the application that most VE novice users have to acquaint with before advancing further. In this article, I will share six quick application buttons or workflows that should diversify and expedite your ModelIT approach:
1. Filtering nomenclature of Room Space
As obvious as this may sound, first time users may be overwhelmed with the many application buttons while not noticing the filter option at its humble corner. If you have systematically named your room spaces, the filter function is a beneficial assistant in quickly identifying a specific room space.
An example of this usage is, a user can promptly filter room space that has the keyword "café" and proceed to assign them into a room group under the "Create and Edit Space Groups" function. I can't emphasise the process of orderly naming of all room spaces as this lays the groundwork for data assignment and troubleshooting of a huge model that comes close to a thousand rooms, at the later stage.
2. Model Consistency Report
Many first time VE users conveniently skip this step without apprehending the importance of consistency checks. This model consistency report step details any errors within the geometry that require fixing before proceeding to any thermal simulations. The main issues that have to be addressed are intersections, non-planar surfaces and external holes with the latter two problems being of uppermost importance.
By toggling the "Room Grouping Schemes" option, ModelIT will group rooms with geometry issues for your convenience of rectification. While most users merely toggle "Section A – Consistency Check" for the purpose above, I have the preference of selecting "Section B – Data Assignment" to quickly overview the complexity of the model and its assignment before proceeding to the simulation steps.
3. Edit Glazing, Doors and Louvres
Do you know that with this button, you can quickly construct a specific glazing dimension or perhaps a percentage area to the façade, for a particular tilt or azimuth of the façade? Instead of painstakingly drawing repetitive glazing in each surface decomposition level, this button allows you also to specify the offset of glazing, the spacing between the glazing and even the number of rows and columns of glazing.
This feature is particularly useful for organic and natural form building design where there are too many surfaces to construct the specific geometry of glazing individually. The example above shows the assignment of glazing to the surfaces that are only between 60 to 90 degrees tilt. If you are looking for in-depth training on ModelIT glazing geometry techniques, there is also a detailed on-demand video on this topic HERE.
4. Conditional Opening Selection and Assignment
Are you finding a way to quickly select all associated openings of similar geometry property or a particular construction type? The "Opening Selection and Assignment" button does more than that by also allowing you to assign construction and macroflo assignments swiftly. This shortcut is very useful in selecting a vast quantity of specific glazing properties across all surfaces of all rooms in the model instead of manually assigning the construction and macroflo by going down to each surface decomposition level.
5. Key-In function
Yet, another commonly missed out feature of ModelIT, the key-in command allows an array of key-in codes to expedite your ModelIT process. The Help menu has an exhaustive list of key-ins made available for your reference. One of my few favourite key-ins will be the "text=on" which allows me to check the name and floor area quickly and visually on the floor plan.
You can also access the OpenStreetMap by typing in "osm" which allows you to import map data from OpenStreetMap and automatically create the geometry of surrounding buildings. Another helpful key-in is the "dx=xx,yy" function where you can set a relative position from the current location by x and y offset distance (e.g. dx=20,10 means 20 meters to the right along the x-axis and 10 meters to bottom along the y-axis).
6. ConstructDXF
What surprises me is many consultants have not utilised this feature we have had since the legacy Virtual Environment 6.0! You may have come across the many ways of importing geometry into the VE as mentioned in the Full VE Applications bundle course in our distance learning platform. While it is common to attach a refined and filtered Dxf drawing and tracing geometry over, there is a quicker method to extract the 2D file into 3D geometry within seconds with a few construction settings. This approach of modelling typically works better with a rigid and rectangular model configuration.
The only items in a drawing which are essential for the use of ConstructDXF are external and internal walls and space name text (see dxf layout above). For more information, please read our ConstructDXF help menu HERE. Note: Remember to break the compound object into its component objects in CAD first by the function of "Explode" before proceeding to import the dxf file.
As mentioned in the previous article, there are multiple approaches to modelling an energy model and our ModelIT has an array of functions to cater to various workflow from the differing onset of information. If you have any feedback on improving the ModelIT application, please contact support@iesve.com.
If you want more information on our Lunch-N-Learn videos, or any advanced training session, please contact training@iesve.com for more details.
