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How to merge an EnergyPlus IDF with an OpenStudio IDF?

I would like to merge two IDFs modeling two parts of the same building, one created in EnergyPlus IDF Editor and another in OpenStudio 1.10. The IDF Editor model contains a refrigerated warehouse that could not be created in OS, and the OS model contains the rest of the building (dry warehouse, office, kitchen, etc). Is there a way to do this without having duplicate surfaces, schedules, nodes, and without losing systems? I don't want to just copy and paste one IDF into another because I assume there will be problems with naming conventions between the two files for nodes, surfaces that would take forever to rename. I tried a variation of the process in the post below, but it did not merge the systems.

https://unmethours.com/question/3951/...

kramerica's avatar
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kramerica
asked 2016-03-03 10:21:50 -0500
__AmirRoth__'s avatar
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__AmirRoth__
updated 2016-03-03 10:57:10 -0500
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If your workflow is to eventually add EnergyPlus objects that aren't available in OpenStudio, your best options are:

  • write a measure to add the EnergyPlus objects within the OpenStudio application
  • complete the model as much as possible in OpenStudio, then manually alter the IDF file it generates using IDF Editor or a text editor

If you have not written measures before, you can search the Building Component Library for public measures others have uploaded. If you want to learn how to write measures, the Measure Writing Guide is a good starting point.

The workflow on the question you linked is for merging two OpenStudio files (__.osm extension), so it likely won't work for merging two EnergyPlus files (__.idf extension).

Aaron Boranian's avatar
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Aaron Boranian
answered 2016-03-03 11:15:05 -0500
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This measure might be helpful, or this one.

ericringold's avatar ericringold (2016-03-03 11:19:31 -0500) edit
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this post has more information and a link to a video demonstration of the measure to merge OSM generated geometry into an existing IDF file. This is the second measure in @Eric Ringold's comment

David Goldwasser's avatar David Goldwasser (2016-03-03 13:39:09 -0500) edit
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@aaron, yes the question I linked is for two osm files, so I tried importing the idf file into OS and saving it as an osm object and following the directions in the link to merge the resulting osm file with my existing osm file. All this did was import the geometry from the idf file, and left out the refrigeration systems. @Eric, I will try the first measure you linked and see if that works.

kramerica's avatar kramerica (2016-03-03 17:26:36 -0500) edit
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I didn't find a way to do what I wanted, but instead just rebuilt the part of my model that I had mode in IDF editor. Mostly I could copy and post objects. The difficult part was creating/naming all the new schedules and connecting the nodes to the appropriate locations.

kramerica's avatar kramerica (2016-03-14 14:41:45 -0500) edit
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