Calculating WWR by orientation

[cfrankowski]

I'd like to recreate the Vertical Fenestration by orientation (Above-grade Wall and Vertical Glazing Area by Orientation) section from the Model report.
I've run into 2 road blocks:

• There is no way to determine above-grade / below-grade for a room, so the WWR includes all below grade spaces.

• You cannot get the site orientation from the API.

Am I wrong? If not, can we get this added to the todo list?

[Rhind]

Hi,

You can get both of these values from the VEGeometry API. Have a look at the methods get_wwr() and get_building_orientation().

Hope that helps.

[cfrankowski]

Hi,

You can get both of these values from the VEGeometry API. Have a look at the methods get_wwr() and get_building_orientation().

Hope that helps.

get_wwr() provides a single WWR for the entire building. I'm hoping to get a WWR for each orientation (North, South, East, West), like it is in the Model Report.

get_building_orientation() I'm not seeing this in the documentation or when running dir() on the VEGeometry object. As expected, I get an AttributeError when attempting to call the method. Was this added in a recent hotfix/feature pack? I'm running 2018.0.1.0 to avoid the API issues that were introduced in more recent versions.

[Rhind]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that get_building_orientation() is in an upcoming version of the VE.

I think you're right in thinking that there is no way of getting a per orientation WWR. I've logged it in the IES system for consideration for a future release.

[samg]

Agree it would be great to be able to get site orientation

WWR by orientation would be nice as well, but I was able to calculate this (like it is in the Model Report) by totaling surface properties which are sorted by orientation (manually taking into account the site orientation) with the following:
surface.get_properties()["orientation"] - site_rotation
surface.get_areas()["external_gross"]
surface.get_areas()["external_window"]

As for the issue with determining above/below-grade, for now you could use room groups to sort, as well as manually appplying a factor to rooms which are partly above. Not ideal but could work for now.

[katarzyna_m]

Hi,
are there any updates on accessing site orientation via API?

[Rhind]

Yes, get_building_orientation() has been available in the software for some time now. The ability to set the building orientation was added in 2023 Feature Pack 1 with set_building_orientation(). Both of these are part of the VEGeometry class.

[katarzyna_m]

That`s great, thanks for the info!