IES-VE User Forum

This is a really annoying problem, which must be a bug.
I am finding that when I merge two zones, problems appear in the model. For example, external glazing has been removed from the merged zone, internal holes have been lost, etc. Running a model check shows up external holes which shouldn't be there, etc, etc, all as a result of merging two zones that were fine beforehand. This is in addition to the annoying fact that Model-IT renames all joined zones "join" rather than keeping the name of one of the zones which would be far more useful, and the fact that newly joined zones are put onto layer 1 instead of the layer the two rooms came from. Argggh. Have reported this problem to IES several times now, with no helpful response forthcoming as yet.

Jerry

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for this feedback. The IES development team have already acted on your feedback on this feature and you should see the Merge tool improved in the next release of <VE> (I know for a fact retaining the name of one of the merged rooms has already been implemented as I am using a development version with this improvement just now).

We are also looking at ways of retaining other rooms information when merging so hopefully some more feature improvements will appear shortly.

Phil

Jerry, you're not alone in having these problems with the merge tool. It's a great idea, but unfortunately it was put on a commercial release without proper testing that it does actually work properly. I don't really know what it's still doing there, quite frankly.

Basically, the problem is that merging zones together creates all kinds of problems and model corruption.

1. Until they fix it, I suggest not to use it unless you absolutely have to.

2. If you do need to use it absolutely, there is a way around the problems but it's complex and time consuming. I've done this myself and avoided all the corruption problems and disappearing windows. Here's what you do:

(a) save a new version of your model.
(b) on that new version, delete all the rooms except for the ones you wish to merge together
(c) copy the to-be-merged zones to a location above your model, say 10m (or higher)
(d) on the just-copied zones (the copy 10m above your original to-be-merged zones), add extra zones around the zones you wish to merge such that all windows are covered and become internal windows
(e) go back to the to-be-merged zones and merge the desired zones together (the ones that are below the copies)
(f) go back to the copied zones to retrieve the zone names, and rename the newly-merged zones
(g) delete the just-copied zones, leaving only the surrounding zones; these zones contain the windows that you'll use to restore in your newly-merged zone
(h) move the surrounding zones 10m down such that the windows are reapplied, now on the newly-merged zones
(i) export the model to GEM file
(j) close the model, go back to your original model, delete the zones you wanted to merge together
(k) import the GEM file of your newly merged zones

As I have done the above I know it works, however I would suggest trying it out on a backup first. Also, don't attempt if you're new to IES.