Hello Dr. Finlayson,

For whatever reason, I'm having a lot of difficulty searching for
answers to my Demeter inquries through google sketchup groups / bldg-sim
archives / Demeter forums (are they even up?)... and it occurred to me
there simply might not be much discussion out there to look for! This
email should go a long way to remedy that!

I have some feedback for your team in the form of constructive
criticism and issues I've had, along with a few related questions.
Overall, I really like what I see so far, though I understand the
project is still under development (the current version hosted on the
website is 0.8.9.2, for anyone following along). I'll throw out that my
feedback is colored from the perspective I've gained after some
successful experiences working with the free plugin from IES, which ties
into their commercial energy modeling software packages in much the same
way that Demeter is tied to Green Building Studio.

I'm also copying this feedback to the [bldg-sim] mailing list to spark
some further Demeter discussion/feedback and to request other end-users'
workarounds/experiences for our collective benefit. It's my hope that
the IES VE-Ware sketchup plugin development team will also review these
points as both tools have some key things to learn from each other...
Any responses you've got addressing these points would be good to post
on [bldg-sim] as well, I'd imagine.

Feedback/Issues encountered:

+ As you may be well aware, one cannot have the IES Sketchup
plugin and the Demeter plugin installed at the same time without
sketchup crashing at every startup. While one might speculate that you
two development teams might want that, being "competing" products (?), I
think it would be appropriate to recognize that users like myself who
might wish to explore Demeter/GBS vs. IES/IES-VEWare get annoyed when we
have to uninstall/reinstall software to do our jobs. Ideally I'd like
both installed at the moment anyway - see my next point...

+ Something to note: There is a real and interesting
contrast in the manner of defining spaces between the IES and Demeter
plugin. Demeter's capability to "check contiguity" for enclosed
volumes, and to highlight planes that are out-of-whack for ease in
correcting the issue is wonderful. The IES plugin's approach of "find
spaces" on the other hand is MUCH less tedious than having to manually
select every plane enclosing a space, without an opportunity to correct
one's selection if you accidentally miss or include a stray plane.
Ideally, I think both plugins ought to learn from each other and create
a "find spaces" command that, perhaps with an option ticked, might
perform that function while additionally subsequently highlighting any
and all non-contiguous planes to the defined volumes. Wouldn't life be
grand? =)

+ The cube user interface is altogether nifty and
functional. One major improvement however, for those of us without
large displays (Mine runs at 1280x1024), would be to have the option to
have the interface "auto-hide" until one mouses-over the top of the
window. As it is the model interface window uses up half of my working
space, making it kinda difficult to manipulate my model views to
correctly select/de-select faces for defining the spaces.

+ I cannot get the "energy analyse" cube-face to operate
correctly with GBS. It gives me an error consistently telling me
"Webserver Logon Failed." Any thoughts?

+ (Nitpick) Whenever I export an xml file using the
interface or plugin drop-down feature, the resulting file has no
extension. Adding .xml however allows GBS desktop to recognize the file
for importing.

+ (Nitpick) The installer I have tries by default to install
to a Google Sketchup 6 directory. I'm using version 7 (this may be the
root of some of my other issues). It'd be nice/convenient if the
installer could figure that out on its own what is the appropriate
directory.

+ Once the exported .xml file is selected in the appropriate
GBS desktop field, I cannot successfully complete a run. Trying to view
the model in VRML results in an error reading "geometry is not a field
of Material." I suspect incompatible versions of sketchup/GBS/Demeter
is the root of this issue...?

+ Back to the UI: The "Space Definition" face of the cube
has three buttons whose function I have not been able to figure out, nor
find documentation explaining their purpose. Plane Up / Plane Down /
Plane Tool. If they are intended to be some alternative to manually
selecting each face of a volume, that would be a step in the right
direction for ease of use (see above).

+ Regarding the "Surface Definition" face of the cube...
here I have to get more critical. The first model I tried this out on
has something like 600+ faces. Your interface does not allow one to
define more than one face at a time. One should be able to first select
and change an entire space's face properties as a group, and
subsequently be able to select multiple faces at a time to change their
properties. I hate to sound partial to IES but it sure is nice that the
IES plugin figures out what is a floor vs. a roof vs. an
interior/exterior wall automatically (though to what degree of accuracy
I've not ascertained)... Something that both automatically guesses
(with some accuracy) surface definitions, while allowing the end-user to
easily review and edit those properties would be ideal for both plugins.

+ While I obviously am having trouble getting GBS to play
nicely with Demeter, I'm very hopeful that a successfully created .inp
file from GBS, originating from a Sketchup/Demeter model, will correctly
and accurately be importable into eQuest, where a good number of us
energy modelers get a lot of "post-preliminary-design-stage" work done.
That would bridge a long-desired path I've had regarding establishing a
workflow from Sketchup --> eQuest. Previous mailing list postings have
indicated this is a possibility, but as it stands with whatever
combination of compatibility/end-user (me) issues exist, I've yet to see
this pull through with my own eyes. I hope GBS's ties with Autodesk's
Ecotect product won't impair this possibility in the future.

+ On that note, could you clarify for myself and others the
relationship that exists between the development teams for Demeter
(Green Space Research) Green Building Studio, and Autodesk's Ecotect
software? To what extent might the goals of one group
influence/restrict the others?

+ Is there a mailing list one can join to be notified
if/when new versions of Demeter are developed?

I hope this feedback is useful to many, and would encourage other users
of Sketchup/Demeter/IES/GBS to chime in with their thoughts and
experiences!

NICK CATON, E.I.T.