Windcatchers and IES System Questions

[Marc Jensen]

Hello All,

I would like to add my bit regarding how Windcatchers can be improved and help with some of our issues we have encountered.



Backround:

Fuel station, 165m2 retail area, added windcatcher for Natural Ventilation requirements and free cooling.

We found that:
1) Windcatchers seem to make random holes in the roof. You can only tell that they are there once you have finalized the component which is unfortunately a pain in the ... to remove. The only way that we have found to fix errors is to start again and have 2-3 backups before we finalize.
Using the Rebuild ClipOpenings Rebuild combination of commands has never worked.
Is there a better way to implement and insert these devices without them breaking the whole model. (We have followed the tutorials, YouTube, help documents and forum posts and haven't found a consistent method that always works.)

2) Windcatchers need to be changed to have South Hemisphere seasons as they are defaulted to Northern Hemisphere seasons.
This could be easily automated by when the windcatcher is finalized, the weather and location data is analyzed and the correct season template is used.

3) Windcatchers do not perform well at removing CO2 from the building. Most the time the CO2 is greater than 3000ppm (Max) with one device, and only goes below 1500ppm with two of the largest available devices installed. This seems inadequate to us. Is this normal?

4) Oval windcatchers seem to be the hardest to get to work.



System Questions:

1) Why can't the scroll wheel on the mouse be used in menus? Most of all menus the user has to click and drag to move or push the arrow down... When you have a multitude of templates or simulations etc this is horrible.

2) Why is IES so slow? On a i7 2600 16gigs of ram desktop used for CAD, the exact simulation takes 19 minutes rather than the 20 minutes on a i5 laptop.
Why are all plugins (Apart from Flucs-Pro and Microflo, Radiance sensor calcs) still in the 90's running on a single thread?
Why are 20 minute long simulations utilizing less than half available ram on average? 1.5gigs
When will x64 support be available? (Yes I know rewriting of engines and simulation controllers will need to be done, but I would rather a faster simulation than less bugs, as with bugs you can work around them and take up less time.)

3) gbXML conversion from Architects models to IES requires specific zoning and reduction of details etc that usually takes longer than modelling the building in IES from scratch. This needs work in our eyes.



Im sure I am not the only one with these questions, hope I haven't bombarded too much!


Cheers

Marc

[ZapBran]

I've only toyed with the windcatchers... from what I gather they seem to have been done in conjunction with the manufacturer (monodraft?) so the actual performance must have been signed off by them rather than IES... would like to see them more drag and drop than this place/finalise mess.

I'm with Marc on the XML import - would very much like to see a "ok, I know it has problems but bring it in anyway" feature then I can just trace the ****ed up zone in Modelit and delete the junk.... or even better modelit realises this and draws a bounding box round the messy part and most of the time i can live with it. could see it being tricky to program though.

[Marc Jensen]

Really? So we need to contact Monodraft and have them hold our hand through the process? Sounds like a bit of a waste of time.

I think for the wind catchers to be a joy to use they should have a radio button in apache to model how good it could actually be without actually modelling in one so you know before you pull your hair out how far the building can actually benefit from the system. Such as select how many units per room or floor etc and automate it.

Im sure that is possible but would be hard lol

[PCully]

Hi guys,

I left this one (couldn't face reading that post until now in al honesty...) but feel I should comment as some of your comments are great feedback (the north/south hemisphere seasonal variation is likely one that hadn't been considered) but some others I think you're just letting out some frustrations which on a forum like this isn't getting much attention.

We did work closely with Monodraught on this project and the performance data is all their own based on tests of their products so I think they should be performing as specified but of course every building is different and so the impact they can have will vary. You aren't tied to that data, you could still take advantage of the pre-built components and then modify the performance data for your own tests.

I think any genuine software feedback or ideas you have could be passed on to feedback@iesve.com so the team can consider them for future updates, you do seem to know what you are talking about and to hear from genuine users can really benefit the IES development processes so we continue to be able to give you guys what you want.

Phil

[Marc Jensen]

Hi Phil,

Well you were correct I was venting a little but had some ideas that hopefully could improve the IES environment so that other users do not have the same issues. I will compile my different feedback and send them through to there.

I have done some experimenting over multiple buildings with the wind-catchers and have found that they have ok performance in the best case and really under perform in others. Would this be related to the temperature variations coupled with the wind directions, intensities and other weather variables found in New Zealand? I assume that if the Monodraught works well in Europe it should perform the same in New Zealand...

As a consumer and not a producer of IES, I will probably always expect any deficiency or issue to have a fix or have been perfected by the software team, but that is not the case (Usually).

Re my frustrations, I am always wanting the best out of components, programs, simulations and technology. If I can clearly see that I am not getting the most optimized experience I will seek to get it.

In my view what is the point of spending $4000 NZD on a better computer to run a program that I sit and wait for that completes simulations only 10 seconds faster than my cheapie laptop did.
I guess we have been spoilt with the multi-threaded and 100% optimized programs that have been brought out recently to showcase the pedigree if you may of the latest hardware and software.

[ZapBran]

Q: How have the other programs plugged the monodraught products in? IES could perhaps look at how that was one (if it was). I'd been keen to get a link to see it - pop in this thread please.