Interfacing BIM with Building Thermal and Daylighting Modeling

This paper presents our research and development of system interfaces between Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Building Energy Modeling (BEM), for supporting integrated architectural design and energy simulation. Our methods utilize the BIM authoring tools’ Application Programming Interface (API) to translate BIM into Object-Oriented Physical Models (in Modelica) for building thermal simulation, and input files of ray-tracing software (Radiance) for daylighting simulation. Based on the methods, we have created two prototypes: Revit2Modelica and Revit2Radiance. Using these prototypes, when BIM (Revit models) are created for building design, multi-domain simulations (thermal and daylighting) can be conducted immediately. BIM becomes a common user interface for architectural design and building performance simulations.

[1]  Vladimir Bazjanac,et al.  ACQUISITION OF BUILDING GEOMETRY IN THE SIMULATION OF ENERGY PERFORMANCE , 2001 .

[2]  Michael Wetter,et al.  Modelica-based modelling and simulation to support research and development in building energy and control systems , 2009 .

[3]  Michael Wetter,et al.  MODELICA VERSUS TRNSYS – A COMPARISON BETWEEN AN EQUATION-BASED AND A PROCEDURAL MODELING LANGUAGE FOR BUILDING ENERGY SIMULATION , 2006 .

[4]  Ghang Lee,et al.  Specifying parametric building object behavior (BOB) for a building information modeling system , 2006 .

[5]  William L. Carroll,et al.  Daylighting simulation: methods, algorithms, and resources , 1999 .

[6]  Christoph F. Reinhart,et al.  Findings from a survey on the current use of daylight simulations in building design , 2006 .

[7]  Deo Prasad,et al.  Designing with Solar Power: A Source Book for Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BiPV) , 2005 .

[8]  Peter A. Fritzson,et al.  Principles of object-oriented modeling and simulation with Modelica 2.1 , 2004 .

[9]  Ala Hasan,et al.  Impact of adaptive thermal comfort criteria on building energy use and cooling equipment size using , 2011 .

[10]  John L. Dettbarn,et al.  Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry. , 2004 .

[11]  Anne Grete Hestnes,et al.  Solar Energy Houses: Strategies, Technologies, Examples , 2013 .

[12]  Thierry S. Nouidui,et al.  Validation and Application of the Room Model of the Modelica Buildings Library , 2012 .

[13]  Vladimir Bazjanac,et al.  Reduction, simplification, translation and interpretation in the exchange of model data , 2007 .

[14]  Vladimir Bazjanac,et al.  IFC BIM-Based Methodology for Semi-Automated Building Energy Performance Simulation , 2008, ICIT 2008.

[15]  I. Beausoleil-Morrison,et al.  TOOLS FOR THE DESIGN OF ZERO ENERGY SOLAR HOMES , 2005 .

[16]  K. P. Lam,et al.  A comparative study of the IFC and gbXML informational infrastructures for data exchange in computational design support environments , 2007 .