10 - Create & edit Construction sets (envelope) in OpenStudio

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All right everyone. In last the video we actually worked on schedules. First of all, If, I hope you're making all the notes during these webinars. There's so much information floating around. I want you to make your own notes. Please, just take out all the bullet points. For example, as I mentioned, we're, what are the best locations to assign these schedules? You want to start with the space types. And then, spaces on directly at internal loads. Assigning space types, schedules at the story or building level isn't appropriate for this kind of workflow, all right. Now, after schedules, we are going to work on constructions. Again, a similar kind of concept. What you have for schedules, you can assign it at different levels. Building story, space types, spaces, or directly add surface and subsurface options. The best location to assign it at building level, in case you have each and every wall constructed of same material. Same window wall properties, same roof properties.

 

You should assign it at building level. And, you know when to assign for story level. If you have multiple segments or sections of a building constructed with different properties, you should assign construction sets at story level. Assigning space types. I'm sorry, assigning construction set space type and space isn't very appropriate. You want to do it only for, only at space level. When each and every wall associated to that particular space has a totally different property, okay. But, what happens in a lot of projects, what we see is, a particular wall of, let's say, south facing wall. It has a different kind of insulation. It has Adobe wall, or, let's say, you have a particular section of roof, which has some kind of green roof. You need to provide a separate insulation property. In that kind of scenario, you just assign a new roof insulation directly at surface. That insulation property will override everything, what you have provided at either building level, or story level. Let's work on some examples, here. As I mentioned to you, the most appropriate location is building level for construction set, all right. And then, story. And then, directly at surface or subsurface level. Please make a note out of it.

 

Let me just go back to my OpenStudio interface, again. Again, we have finished the schedule set. I'm going to create a new copy of my model. Let's say, V7, actually, V8 underscore construction. Save it, and go to your construction tab. Again, as I mentioned to you earlier, we had only one construction set based on 90.1 2010 for climate zone 3C, okay. You can always create a new construction set here, by clicking the plus sign. Or, you can make changes in the existing one. Let's just look around. What is happening with this construction set, here. Again, this construction set has different entities. Something like, exterior wall, here, exterior floor, exterior roof. All of them are based on ASHRAE 90.1 2010 for climate 3C. Then internal wall properties, then ground contact surface constructions, exterior subsurface constructions, fixed window, operable windows, doors. And, you can see there is nothing provided for skylight, all right. There is some information for daylight domes, tubular daylight diffusers.

 

It's unfortunate that they don't, like, you know, they don't have anything here for skylights. Well, you can always create your own library. As I mentioned to you earlier, so that next time when you upload this library in your model, you see that skylight, as well. For example, I mean, if I save this model. Open my SketchUp, here. Let me just go back to my C Drive I have some issues with my SketchUp it seems. It doesn't open directly from this window. I need to go to C folder, and double click on this. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to open my existing OpenStudio model, here. I'm just going to create one skylight for you. I'm going to delete Steve, here. I'm going to open the latest OpenStudio model, here. And, by using the SketchUp tools, I'm going to create one skylight on this space. You know how to do it. Just use this rectangular toolbar. Come out of this space, save it, and open this model, again, in OpenStudio interface, again, all right. Let me just do it for you.

 

When you make some changes in SketchUp interface, it doesn't make any other changes, you can still open this saved model in SketchUp. Again, in OpenStudio main interface, all right. It has all the information. But, if I save it, here, again. You can actually reload this model in SketchUp. Let me just make some tiny changes. For example, if I go to schedules, and any of schedule I make any major change, let's say, like this, okay. And save it, now. I can actually reload this model easily in SketchUp. See, it asked you, hey, do you want to reload it? Yes. But, vice versa is not possible. If you make changes in SketchUp, you can't upload, or, actually, reload this model easily in OpenStudio interface. You need to open the file again, okay.

 

Now, if I go to my constructions, and check that, hey, there is nothing provided in skylight. Well, a lot of times what happens, people create skylights, and use this OpenStudio resource method. They applied the construction set at building level. Let me just show you, here. Go to facility. At building level I have provided this construction set. If you want, just remove this space type, here. It's doing nothing here. You can just remove it. All these values are, like, construction set values are assigned at building level. And, they are flowing to stories, you can go to stories, there. Click on these stories. You can see, you can provide construction set, here. Well, we haven't done it, okay. The next one is, either it can be space types, that location is, again, not appropriate. But, you can do it if you want. You can see here, the next one is undirected space level. This is space tab, here. You can assign construction set, here. Again, that's not appropriate. Or, you can assign directly at the surface, or subsurface level. This is surface area spaces. And, it will take some time, because they, there is so much information on this page, it takes some time to reload. You can just override this green text, here. And, we are going to do it in the next 10 or 15 minutes, all right.

 

If you go back to that chart, again. I showed you, where can you assign the these properties. Same thing with schedule, and same thing with other information, like, internal loads and all, okay. Let me go back to my OpenStudio interface, again. And, run the simulation. Because, I want to show you that, hey, if you don't provide any information for a skylight, the model will crash on you, or, on the simulation. And, it will crash on me in like, the next 5 or 10 seconds. Look, it's taking some time. It says starting simulation. But, I know there is no skylight information provided. Most probably, it will crash on me. All right, we know that it failed on me. Once, before I jump on the construction tab again, let me show you how to take care of these errors. Hey, like, you know, what if our model crashes on me? How can I QC this error? What you can do, just click on this, show simulation, here. Click on it. And, it will open the directory for you. The directory where you saved your model.

 

I've saved my model on desktop, the folder name is OpenStudio Webinar. And, if you remember, OpenStudio always creates and associated directly for you, as I mentioned in my first video. Click on this directory. And, go to, run. That's how the directory looks like. I will explain to you later, maybe next to next week, or maybe after that. But, for now, go to, run tab here. That's what it opens when you click on this, show simulation, same thing. It has different kind of files. For now, just look for this eplusout.err, that's the error file. Right click on it. And, open it in Notepad++. And, it shows you that, hey, like, you know, what kind of error is that. There's a serial error, here. You can see it says that, hey, fenestration surface, subsurface tool, the missing required property is missing. Now, I know that, hey there is something wrong with this subsurface. I can actually like, you know, look for this subsurface, here. Like, you know, you can either go to OpenStudio main interface. Go to this space tab, here. And, I know this is subsurface. In case I need to QC it from scratch, I'll just look into it. Subsurface sub tab, here. Let me just click on it, here. And, look for subsurface too. This one is, here it is. And, you can see there is no information, here. The text is not green. Either you can just provide the information directly, here. I know if there is just one skylight, I can bring something from either library or from my model. If I go to my model, and rather than looking for a construction set, this is not a construction set, this is a particular construction, all right. Look for constructions. That's what it is here. And, drag and drop any of the window material for now.

 

I know this is like, window material based on ASHRAE 90.1 2010. Just drag and drop it here. Can you see this text is black in color, rather than green. It means it's not bringing any properties through that waterfall method. What if, if I just like, remove it, delete it from here, in edit option, just delete it. And then, assign the skylight property directly at construction set. Go to my model, bring this exterior window, all window property, and drag it in the skylight. And then, again, go to this space, and look for subsurface. You can see now, the text is green in color, which means it has some kind of insulation property provided. Save the model, and run the simulation. And, it should work this time. There's another way, method to QC it. Again, you can see I made some changes in my OpenStudio main interface. And, it asked me to reload it, click yes. And now, if you want to QC your model, hey, which is subsurface 2. You can, what you can do, you can actually filter it out, here. Look for this, search surface option, click on it. And, like, rename, look for the name subsurface 2, here. And, hit, search enter model.

 

Now you can see, it actually filtered out that particular surface for me. I can click on it. Now, double click on this space, click on this surface, hold inspector tool. And now, you can see, for now we have provided some kind of material. It's all right, but like, you can easily QC here, as well. You can just provide property directly in either SketchUp, or in OpenStudio main interface, all right. They're different ways to QC it. Go to OpenStudio main interface, here. Looks like the simulation is working. We have like, we have taken care of the problem. Let's just like, finish this simulation. We don't want to like, abort it, now. Might take maybe like, an additional 10 or 15 seconds. All right, let's go to this construction tab. As I mentioned to you earlier, there are different kind of constructions assigned to this construction set.

 

Again, these are a bunch of constructions, and when you cluster them together, that's what you call a construction set. When you assign the this construction set at building level, OpenStudio is smart enough to filter out different kind of constructions, and assign it to a building. Or, to these spaces, or these surfaces. For example, if I just, unfilter it out, or actually, you know what, just show you in the inspector tool. Let me just click on surfaces. You can see, the software is smart enough to tell you that, hey, what kind of surface type it is, okay. It does, automatically, it does all these things for you automatically. When it's say that, hey this surface type is floor, OpenStudio will automatically filter out this floor construction and assign it to that particular surface. You need not to worry about going to each and every surface, and assign the properties manually. This software is smart enough.

Now, what if, if you want to make some changes in these constructions. Go to construction tab, here. Again, now, we are in constructions, not in construction set. There are different kinds of constructions. For example, this one is exterior roof, as for ASHRAE 90.1 2010 for climate zone 2 to 8. It has different kinds of outside layers. You can see, this one, first one is roof membrane. Then roof insulation. And then, metal decking. Makes sense, right. For exterior wall, same thing. You have four layers. First one, the outside one, is one inch stucco, then eight inch concrete, then mass wall insulation, and then, half inch gypsum board. For windows, you have one layer, like, fixed window assembly, and so on, all right. This is construction. There is one internal source construction. There is C-factor underground wall construction. Then, F-factor ground floor constructions.

 

If you go to constructions here, let's say, roof insulation. They are three layers, right. There are three materials. In case you need to update those materials, go to this material tab. And, you have different kinds of materials, here. You can purge them if you want. In case you want to remove the unused information. For example, what if, if I want to update the roof insulation. That second layer, this second layer, here, I want to update this. What I can do, I can go to materials, here. And, look for this roof insulation. And, I can either change the thickness, I can change the conductivity, or density, or something. If you are some kind of building science specialist, you should know how these thickness and conductivity work for insulations. For example, if I change the thickness of this roof insulation, I know that the insulation will also increase. If I change the conductivity, it will make some kind of impact on my insulation, okay.

 

There are different ways to create those materials. There are different kinds of materials, no mass material. For example, for carpet, air gap materials. Say, for some double pane windows, or  something. Then you can actually create a simple glazing window type. Just provide overall U-factor, solar heat gain coefficient, visible transmittance. If you want to make a fancy window, or you want to make complicated system, you can actually create a window construction with multiple layers. Create two glass membranes, then one air material, and so on. The easiest way of, at least for this class, is just provide the overall U-value, and solar heat gain coefficient. Glazing window materials for some complicated windows. Gas window materials, blind window materials, daylight redirection materials, air wall materials, infrared, roof agitation materials, and so on. What we will do here, we will go through some multiple examples, here. And, we will see how this construction tab works.

 

What if, if I want to make some changes for my roof insulation. For my design case, my roof insulation is, let's say, I don't know, 8-inches of roof insulation. What I can do, I can just, either create a new copy of this, either you can start from scratch, what you did for schedules. Or, you can just copy this one. It's always a good approach to make the copy of the existing information, so that you need not to create everything from scratch. This is a lot of information, you don't want to create each and every construction by yourself. Let's just rename it to something like, design construction set, okay. And now, I can remove this roof insulation. I want to make a new roof construction, and then assign it to this construction set. Go to constructions, now. And, make a copy of it. Don't delete it, or, don't make changes and directly on it. Rename it to something like, updated 8-inch roof insulation, okay. Now, here are, there are three layers, here. And, I can note down what kind of layers are there. The outside one is roof membrane, then roof insulation, and then, metal decking.

What I'm going to do is, I'm going to remove all these three layers. I go to materials, and in materials section, make a copy of the existing roof insulation. You know how to do it? Just make roof insulation material. And now, it's in meters, here, this is some kind of bug. Go to preferences, units, and change to IP system, here. And now, increase the thickness to, let's say, 8-inches. Now, I want 8-inch insulation, okay. That's good. And, go back to construction set, here. in this new updated 8-inch roof construction. Let me just rename it properly. The first outside layer is going to be roof membrane. I'm sorry, I totally forgot what was that. That was roof membrane. Then insulation and metal decking, yes. You can either bring it from library, but I'm going to use my model. And, you know, the reason. I want to use the existing constructions on materials, what I have in my model, right now. From my materials, look for the roof membrane. Drag and drop, again. Drag it and drop it over this tiny box. The second one is the roof insulation material, this one. Drag and drop. And, the third one is metal decking. And now, assign this new construction to the latest construction set, here. Again, from my model, look for this updated 8-inch roof construction, and assign it at roof.

 

Well, we have created a new construction set. It's not doing anything right now, guys. You need to assign it at building level. You can directly assign it at story level, okay. Let's just assume that one of the story has this new construction set, okay. Go to building level, again. I know we are like, floating around between different kind of tabs, there's so much information. But, once you get familiar with it, you'll be comfortable with this interface, okay. Just keep looking at the videos. At one point of time you'll be, all right. There are three stories, here. I know for three floors, I created three stories. Let's just assume that story three has this updated construction set. Go to the construction site tab, here, from my model. And, bring this new design construction set, assign it at building story three. Now, this so this new construction set is overriding what you have provided at building level, okay. The story three is using the new construction set. Makes sense, right. If you want to confirm it, just go to spaces. Go to surfaces. It will take some time, because there is so much information on this page. And let's just confirm. For floor three, let's just look for floor three, here. Let me just find it for you. I hope I actually created the stories for each and every floor.

 

Let me just see if I, I did not use the story method. It looks like we did not use it. If I go to a facility, again. Go to stories. And, if I see, if I punch it, you can see, wow. I actually did not use story three, at all. What I can, I can do, I can assign this construction set to, let's say, story two, okay, for now. Assign it, and go to spaces, again. It's gonna take some time. And now, we will troubleshoot things here. For example, for floor 1, we still have that ASHRAE 90.1 roof construction, the one existing one. One, which we actually got through space type wizard method. And, if you scroll down and look for floor 2, let me just find something for flow 2, here. This one here, floor 2, IT room. You have this updated 8-inch roof construction. That's how you use the story template, or actually, story resource, here. Very important, here, all right.

 

Now, what we will do, will create some more constructions, here. Let's go back to construction tab, here. We are using both these construction sets. What if, for one particular wall, one particular south-facing wall, you need to provide, let's say, 10-inch of insulation, okay. I'm going to create some problems for you. For example, let me just open SketchUp, again. And, if I delete Steve first. Open the file. And, I want to make this particular wall as, let's say, 8-inch or 9-inch of insulation. For now, I'm just going to rename it. That's why I asked you earlier that, hey, always bring all the information, all the input related information, handy on your table. Like, if I know that, hey, I need to make changes in in this model, for insulation. I can just edit it, or actually, rename it properly. Go to inspector tool. Let me just save this model first, here. I'm not sure if I actually saved it or not.

 

In SketchUp I can reload it. And, for this particular wall, this surface then, I can just rename it. Something, let's say, 8-inch insulation wall underscore south, whatever, okay. And then, save it. And then, reopen this model in OpenStudio. And now, I know the wall name. I can just go to spaces, again. Go to surfaces. Again, this is like, a very important step. Guy, please feel free to make your own notes, there's so much information. I would expect you to practice later, on your own project. But, please go through these videos again and again if you find some difficulty creating these construction sets, or anything, all right. I'm going to look for that particular surface that I renamed, just now. Let's see, where is it. All right, so, this one, which is in floor 2 restroom 8-inch insulation walls south. And, you can see the provided property is green in color, which means it's using that inheritance hierarchy method.

 

Go to constructions, again. And, rather than creating your new construction set, let's just go to constructions directly. In constructions, click on plus sign. Rename it, let's say, updated south wall, okay. And, in materials, go to materials, again. And, either you can create something from scratch, or you can just click on the existing one, make a copy and make some changes. Or, go to library, and go to materials. And, just see if you want to drag-and-drop something, that existing something, for maybe this one. Okay, let's do that. This wall insulation that I brought from library, I can rename it to something like, updated south facing wall. Change the thickness to, it's in meters right now. Go to preferences, units, and then IP. Change the thickness to let's say 8-inch. Conductivity can be same, or something. And, save it, all right.

 

And, go to constructions, or, you know what, let me explain to you one more thing. In case you need to bring something from library, there’s one more method. This other method is, just go to components and measures. And, go to find components. Again, very important. From BCL, you can also bring some construction sets, as well as some kind of HVAC related components. Let me show you, how can you bring something from components, here. Find components. Go to material, or construction assembly should also find, if you want to bring complete set. In materials, go to opaque. I look for like, whatever you need, you can just search it. Let's say wall. And, let's say, you want to bring something fancy. There's so much information here, guys. I'm just going to bring something in real quick. Let's say, this one for now. Hit download. It's downloading right now. And, once it's done, close this window.

 

In materials, let's check if you already have it, here. If not you will find it in your library, actually. Go to materials and look for that particular thing which you download just now. It says BCL, here. I know this is the material which I downloaded, just now. Drag it and drop it in your model. like this. Make some changes. I can make some changes, like on this wall. I decided to make a 10-inch concrete wall, rather than an 8-inch construction, the wall construction. Changes to 10-inch, it's already 10-inch, all right. This is like, you know, how you download material from BCL. Now, go to constructions, look for that updated south wall. Provide the first layer in my model. Let's say, first layer can be, I know, this concrete wall. Let's just make something random. And then, this updated south facing wall, material. And then, maybe half-inch gypsum wall, okay. And now, assign this construction directly. Add that particular wall in spaces. You need not to assign it at building level, or story level. Because, there is just one wall. You can just click on this, space tab. It's working.

 

And, surfaces, look for that particular surface, which we renamed maybe, 5 minutes back, this one. In my model, in constructions, not in construction set. Again, be careful in constructions. Look for this updated south wall, drag it and drop it over this this construction, here. Now, you can see this has a particular construction, of the new construction, which is black in color. It means, that it's not getting any value inherited at some upper level. You have assigned the construction directly at the surface level, okay. Hit save. I'm going to create some more constructions before I run simulation. For example, if I go to constructions, again. And, in constructions, I can create a new window. Let's create a complicated window this time. Add new object, double pane window, okay. And, I can go to materials, now. In this, glazing window material, it's, there's already one existing glass. I can create a new one. Click on the plus sign. Let's say, double pane glass, thickness, you can change the thickness.

 

You don't want like, 3-inch thick glass. Let's make it like, 0.15. And, you can provide some properties. I'm just going to provide something real quick, 0.5. You just need to work out with your manufacturer, to bring all this information, okay. Let's just assume that like, you know, this is our double pane, here. Instead of clear 3mm, I just I can just rename it to something like, double pane, okay. Glass updated, okay. And then, go to gas window materials. There is nothing right now. Click plus or you can just bring something from library either way is fine. If you see, let's see if we have something in library. Right now, there's nothing. We can create something from scratch. Let's say, it's argon, or gas type is, argon. And, all the properties, like, you can provide. I don't have any numbers, right now. But, let's just like, you know, keep it like this. It will take some default values. If you see this as empty, it means it might bring something as default value. I'll explain you this default method later, okay.

 

But, for now let's go to constructions. And, in double pane windows, go to my model in, I'm sorry. In this glazing window material, look for this double pane updated. That's the outside layer. Then gas window material can be argon. And then, this double pane window, again, okay. And, assign this new outside layer to, let's say, to this second construction set, okay. It's here. Fixed windows. You can assign it to operable windows, as well. And for skylights, as well, if you want, all right. The second floor is using this construction set, now, okay. Save the model. And, just to check, I'm going to run the simulation. All right, so, simulation finished, here. What I'm going to do, here, now, I'm going to create some more constructions for you. Click on this construction tab, again. As I explained to you, how you can create the construction set, how can you create different kind of constructions. What if, if you want to assign the ground floor construction value based on F-factor.

 

If you look in ASHRAE 90.1, the ground insulation value is based on F-factor. You can go to F-factor, here. Click on the plus sign, here. And, you can provide information. Like, for example, rename it to ground insulation. You can provide some kind of tags. You don't need to worry about this for now. Provide F-factor value, provide area, and provide parameter expose, okay. And then, assign this ground insulation at either, directly at the surface, or assign it at construction set, if you want to assign it at each and every ground surface in the model. Go to my model, and look for this new updated value, which is in F-factor. And, assign it at ground construction, ground, I'm sorry, floor construction, yeah, all right. What else. What if, if you need to create a new material for simple glazing. Again, same thing, plus sign, rename it, provide U-factor, solar heat gain coefficient, visible transmittance. And, that's it, okay.

 

I'm going to purge it for now. What if, if I have a vegetation roof, or a clean roof, over my roof insulation, or the roof construction. What I'm going to do is, in this construction material, I'm sorry, in material section. I'm going to click the plus sign for roof vegetation, here. You can see this is highlighted. Click the plus sign, rename it to something like, green roof. Provide some height for plants. Let's say, 12-inches, 1 feet. Leaf area index, reflectivity, emissivity, you need to bring all this information from a landscape designer. Smoothness, this information is for soil., thickness of soil, conductivity, and all. I'm just going to keep all the information as default. For example, the default information is green. If I change this to, let's say, 1, the text will be in black color, which means this is not default value. All this information is default if it's green color, okay. Now, I want to assign this green roof on my roof construction. I can go to construction, and let's say, I want to assign it on top of this ASHRAE 90.1 exterior roof insulation. It has 3 layers already. I can't assign the outside most layer directly on top of this roof membrane. Unfortunately, I need to delete all of them first, and then start from scratch. In this, my model, roof vegetation material, drag-and-drop this green roof. Then, go to materials, bring your roof membrane. Then, roof insulation material, which is that IEAD roof insulation. And then, metal decking, okay. Save it. And, again, just to confirm, run the simulation.