SBIR-STTR Award

Today’s building energy modeling practice is highly fractured between different simulation engines, Computer Aided Design (CAD) interfaces, and web resources. While preferences for these fractured components vary between professions and individuals, one principle is nearly unanimously agreed upon: a strong, flexible connection between these three categories of software is needed if the building industry is to reach the full potential of building energy modeling. We will develop a web-based, cloud-integrated application that links existing popular 3D modeling environments to several validated simulation engines, including EnergyPlus/OpenStudio, Radiance, and OpenFOAM. This platform will provide new web-based workflows and will couple whole building energy simulation with daylight and detailed airflow simulation as specified in topic 9c for whole-building energy modeling. Phase I will involve developing core libraries for radiation, solar access, point-in-time daylight and annual daylight, the development of an Application Programming Interface (API) for this core, and setting up a secure server to host these services. Studies will be performed to identify critical inputs to be exposed in API and research into the most appropriate and economical cloud computing resources will be conducted. Following Phase I, resources for full-building energy modeling and computational fluid dynamics will be integrated. The fully-integrated API will not only allow these two types of simulations to tap into cloud computing resources but will also enable new types of studies that cannot be achieved with individual engines, including annual thermal comfort mapping, shade benefit analyses, and augmented heating/cooling system sizing. Not only do the full set of cloud services represent significant commercial value but the integrated, open source API and CAD plugins that are being produced to enable the services yield a substantial public benefit. Specifically, the CAD plugins will permit the running of free simulations locally on desktop computers and will enable many individuals to run simulations who might not otherwise be able to do so. Furthermore, the open source API will allow other software engineers to develop new applications that are not specifically related to cloud computing on top of the work of this project.

Today’s building energy modeling practice is highly fractured between different simulation engines, Computer Aided Design (CAD) interfaces, and computing resources.While preferences for these fractured components vary between professions and individuals, one principle is unanimously agreed upon: a strong, flexible, and programmable connection between these three categories of software is needed if the building industry is to reach the full potential of building energy modeling.A robust connection between two of these three categories of software is presently supported through a plugin that connects popular CAD interfaces to several commonly used simulation engines (Radiance, OpenStudio / EnergyPlus, OpenFOAM).While this plugin is successful in this respect and has been downloaded over 200,000 times, it is poorly integrated with the computing resources available in today’s world, which has placed clear limits on the scale and nature of simulations that can be run with it.To address this situation, a web-based cloud computing platform is being built that will connect to this plugin and offer access to orders of magnitude more computing resources, thereby facilitating the simulation of larger models and the exploration of more design options.As the only cloud computing platform to integrate across several simulation engines, it will also enable new web-based workflows that couple whole building energy simulation with daylight and detailed airflow simulation as specified in topic 9c for whole-building energy modeling.Over the course of Phase I, a prototype of this cloud service that focused on enabling various types of daylight studies was successfully designed, built and deployed for initial beta testing.An application programming interface (API) was built for this cloud platform, allowing it to communicate with not just the aforementioned CAD plugin but also 3rd party applications seeking to use the cloud platform.During Phase II, full-building energy modeling will be integrated with the cloud service.The fully-integrated web API will enable new types of studies that cannot be achieved with individual engines, including annual thermal comfort mapping, shade benefit analyses, and more.Not only do the full set of cloud services represent a significant commercial value but the integrated, open source API and CAD plugins that accompany these services yield a substantial public benefit.Specifically, the CAD plugins permit the running of free simulations locally on desktop computers and this enables many individuals to run simulations who might not otherwise be able to do so.Furthermore, the web API will allow other software engineers to develop new applications on top of the work of this project, spurring the creation of web applications that use building simulation through the cloud platform.