View3D Integration Scripting

[jasondegraw]

Pull request overview

Add Python script(s) to support use of the View3D tool.

Pull Request Author

Add to this list or remove from it as applicable. This is a simple templated set of guidelines.

• Title of PR should be user-synopsis style (clearly understandable in a standalone changelog context)
• Label the PR with at least one of: Defect, Refactoring, NewFeature, Performance, and/or DoNoPublish
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• Author should provide a "walkthrough" of relevant code changes using a GitHub code review comment process
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• If changes fix a defect, the fix should be demonstrated in plots and descriptions
• If any defect files are updated to a more recent version, upload new versions here or on DevSupport
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• If structural output changes, add to output rules file and add OutputChange label
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Reviewer

This will not be exhaustively relevant to every PR.

• Perform a Code Review on GitHub
• If branch is behind develop, merge develop and build locally to check for side effects of the merge
• If defect, verify by running develop branch and reproducing defect, then running PR and reproducing fix
• If feature, test running new feature, try creative ways to break it
• CI status: all green or justified
• Check that performance is not impacted (CI Linux results include performance check)
• Run Unit Test(s) locally
• Check any new function arguments for performance impacts
• Verify IDF naming conventions and styles, memos and notes and defaults
• If new idf included, locally check the err file and other outputs

[nrel-bot-3]

@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[nrel-bot-2c]

@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[mitchute]

@jasondegraw

The idea proposed in the NFP is straightforward enough. Here are a few comments:

1. What does the "-z" option mean? It says "process zone ZONE", but I'm missing the intent. Is that just processing the view factors for "ZONE" and not the entire file? I probably just answered my own question, but you can let me know.
2. Are there plans to integrate your tests into the CI tests?
3. It would probably be nice to have the script write a summary of the surfaces and view factors to a flat text file so the results can be inspected and debugged outside of the epJSON. Maybe there needs to be another option for this?

[amirroth]

Why not integrate View3D into the EnergyPlus executable and provide this as an IDD/IDF option? Asking for a friend. Named Amir.

[mitchute]

Why not integrate View3D into the EnergyPlus executable and provide this as an IDD/IDF option? Asking for a friend. Named Amir.

I'd also be OK with this option. It looks like we're only shipping View3D with Windows packages anyway, so that would open this work up to a few more folks.

[amirroth]

Why are we not shipping this on all platforms? Is there a Windows-only library dependence?

[mitchute]

The interface is an Excel workbook: https://github.com/NREL/EnergyPlus/tree/develop/bin/ViewFactorCalculation

I'm guessing that this was the limitation, but I could be wrong.

[amirroth]

Speechless.

[jasondegraw]

@amirroth You can tell "Amir" (if that's his real name) that it's more a matter of funding than anything. The effort required would weigh in at more than a typical new feature. There's this guy I know, let's call him "Jason", who would be happy to do the integration if there was a way to get it funded without stomping on other new feature work.

Kidding aside, the reason that there's only a Windows version is... there is no good reason. I've known for years that the version that shipped with E+ (version 3.2) was more stable than the version that George Walton handed off to others some time after his retirement. The various versions on GitHub and SourceForge are descendants of that later version of the code and crashed a lot more, but I've built and run those on Mac and Linux since maybe 2012 or so. But with mysterious failures, there wasn't a lot of reason to go and replace a version that worked better. I had thought that the 3.2 code was lost until @Myoldmopar found it in StarTeam a couple of years ago, and that was the version that was used for, um, needed repairs. The two biggest obstacles to building on Mac and Linux are:

• there's an ugly 32/64 thing that's been a problem and
• my lack of a Mac.

So I could stand up a CMake build pretty quick and we could have Mac and Linux versions pretty quickly if that's what we want, but with some caveats.

[jasondegraw]

@mitchute Here are some responses:

1. What does the "-z" option mean? It says "process zone ZONE", but I'm missing the intent. Is that just processing the view factors for "ZONE" and not the entire file? I probably just answered my own question, but you can let me know.

Yes, that option will produce the view factors and outputs for the single zone that is specified.

2. Are there plans to integrate your tests into the CI tests?

Not at this time. It's something we could probably consider later.

3. It would probably be nice to have the script write a summary of the surfaces and view factors to a flat text file so the results can be inspected and debugged outside of the epJSON. Maybe there needs to be another option for this?

We'll take a look at this, for simple files with nicely defined zones it'll be easy to come up with something useful, but with
more complex geometries it'll be hard to make a summary that's easy to read.

[nrel-bot-3]

@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[nrel-bot-3]

@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[nrel-bot]

@jasondegraw @lgentile it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw @Myoldmopar it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw @Myoldmopar it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw @Myoldmopar it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[nrel-bot]

@jasondegraw @Myoldmopar it has been 28 days since this pull request was last updated.

[mjwitte]

@jasondegraw Should this move to v22.2?

[Myoldmopar]

I think it's reasonable to change the milestone on this as it is still marked as draft. If I'm wrong and it's ready for review, no problemo, just switch the milestone back and we'll get it in the queue today.

[nrel-bot-2c]

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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@jasondegraw it has been 7 days since this pull request was last updated.

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