Ambiguity in surface opening areas and constructions

[cfrankowski]

I'm attempting to calculate an overall U/R value for a surface.

A single surface can have multiple openings (doors, windows, etc), and each of those openings can have a different construction applied to it.
As the API currently is, you can only get a combined area for each type of opening, and a list of all constructions used on that surface.
You cannot get the area and construction of each individual opening.

This shortcoming prevents me from accomplishing my goal without guessing and/or introducing errors in some cases.

This part of the API should be made more explicit.

[Rhind]

Hi,

If you call get_openings() on a VESurface object you will get a list of associated openings as VEGeometry objects. If you call get_properties() on these you will get a dictionary that contains data such as the area.

Hope that is of some use?

[cfrankowski]

Hi,

If you call get_openings() on a VESurface object you will get a list of associated openings as VEGeometry objects. If you call get_properties() on these you will get a dictionary that contains data such as the area.

Hope that is of some use?

The piece that is still required is linking a construction to the opening.

For example, take the following surface/wall:


If all 3 windows use the same construction, running get_constructions() will return 2 constructions (the wall construction and the window construction), and you can figure out what is going on.

If each window has a different construction, running get_constructions() on the surface will return 4 constructions (the wall and the 3 window constructions), but there's no way to tell which construction is applied to which window.

A get_constructions() method for VEGeometry would fix this, or some other way of explicitly linking constructions to surfaces/adjacencies/openings.

[Rhind]

Seems like a good idea. I'll log it for consideration for a future version of the API.

[samg]

A get_constructions() method for VEGeometry would fix this, or some other way of explicitly linking constructions to surfaces/adjacencies/openings.

This would be really useful, as well as being able to retrieve geometry of each individual opening (area, height, width, base height).

[Rhind]

This would be really useful, as well as being able to retrieve geometry of each individual opening (area, height, width, base height).

You can get the first three from the VEGeometry API.

[samg]

You can get the first three from the VEGeometry API.

Oh cool! Last time I checked in with tech support it was only possible to get total window area of a surface, not area/height/width of each individual window on that surface.

In the user guide I see get_properties in VEGeometry but it would be helpful to add the list of properties available