| | Steps | Description | Data requirements |
| | Create/edit BIM | Architects can create building components such as walls, floors, roofs, doors, and windows to represent their design intents and specifications in Revit. | (i) Geometry information: area, tilt, azimuth, height, and width.
(ii) Material information: thickness
(iii) Supplementary information: project location, identification numbers for each building components. |
| | Define physical parameters and extra parameters | In order to map missed physical properties in Revit into LBNL Modelica Buildings library, we defined the step of adding the physical parameters, e.g., solar and infrared absorptivities, in existing material properties in Revit. Those physical parameters are added through Revit API.
Additional information regarding the glazing system for thermal modeling needs to be prepared in Revit. The properties for glass thickness and ratio of window frame can be added via updating the window family, and parameters for material properties, e.g., solar transmittance, can be added by using Revit API. | (i) Additional material information: thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, mass density, and solar and infrared absorptivities
(ii) Additional thermal information for glazing system: glass thickness, the ratio of window frame
(iii) Additional material information for glass: solar transmittance, infrared transmissivity of glass, solar reflectance of surface, U-value of frame, infrared and solar absorptivity of window frames |
| | Assign zones | To conduct room-to-thermal zone translation, zoning information is required in Revit. We defined thermal zones by using room components in Revit. The room components basically contain the information of height and the area attached to floors. The latitude information for the room can be retrieved from a Revit function. | (i) Room information: height, area of floors, and latitude
(ii) Zoning information: latitude |
| | Create topology | The thermal information for heat transfer of the building envelope can be prepared in Revit: the information of how the building envelope is constructed, e.g., boundary condition types, and the number of ports for thermal network connections in ModelicaBEM can be generated based on the building topology information retrieved using Revit API.
The building topology provides the information of how many and what building components are connected to a room. The information will be the values of the boundary condition variables in a MixedAir instance in ModelicaBEM. | (i) Thermal information: boundary condition types and the number of ports
(ii) Building components information |
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