Warehouse with Office

Sometimes it is necessary to create a smaller zone such as an office within a larger zone (e.g. a large warehouse space). This tutorial shows 2 different ways to set up a simple 2 zone model such as that illustrated in the screenshots below where a small office is located in bottom corner of a larger warehouse space.

 

    

 

ClosedMethod 1 Using Merge Zones Connected by Holes

The process described below is also illustrated in the Office in Warehouse Tutorial

The steps involved are:

 

1. Draw the ground floor block including both office and warehouse. The block should be the height of the office space as the top of the block will form the ceiling of the office.

 

 

2. Draw the 1st floor block representing the high-level warehouse space.

 

3. Draw a hole in the floor of the 1st floor block to connect the upper and lower warehouse zones together. The upper warehouse zone should look something like the screenshot below. The green line shows the perimeter of the hole.

 

 

4. Select the Merge zones connected by holes model option to merge the upper and lower parts of the warehouse into a single zone.

 

5. The 'floor' on top of the office zone is not usable floor area so go to this floor surface and select the Exclude this surface from total zone floor area option. This indicates that the surface is not part of the building useable floor area. This step ensures that this floor area is not counted in the floor area provided to certification tools such as SBEM. This step is not currently required for EnergyPlus simulations.

Note: if the excluded floor surface contains some external adjacencies as well as internal ones these external areas will not be subtracted from the zone floor area.

 

So the building now consists of 2 zones - an Office and a Warehouse zone. This model is available as one of the DesignBuilder example templates.

 

ClosedMethod 2 - Use Add Surface

 

In general this type of building can most easily be drawn using the Add Surface tool to remove the single height block from the double height space of the warehouse. This method avoids having to draw a tall space using multiple blocks and merging the blocks using holes drawn between them. This section shows how to do this using two blocks one representing the complete building, the other representing the single height parts of the building.

 

  1. The complete block may be drawn extruded from a horizontal or vertical base depending on which is more complex. For a rectangular plan it is better to draw from a vertical base as the pitched or curve roof can be produced without multiple operations.
  2. The vertical base is best drawn with the horizontal base line drawn first and the second edge drawn to snap the vertical axis. Protractor and centre snap tools help when drawing a simple pitched roof.







  3. The added surface (really a removed section) will correspond with the geometry of the single height spaces and is best drawn with its base on the base of the complete block if the perimeter is polygonal. Click on the Add Surface tool and draw the perimeter.



    When complete drag upwards to set the height, entering the height manually or using increment snap.




  4. The surface that has been removed needs to be replaced by a separate block. Make sure that the base is visible and start the Add Block command.




  5. The main geometry is now complete.



  6. If the floor above the office space is not accessible space then navigate to that floor element and on the construction tab select Exclude this surface from total zone area see screenshot below. If the floor is accessible then you should draw virtual partitions around it's perimeter.



    Set the zone height to match EPC Conventions (Section 10.03). In this case it will be the height of the building (top of ground floor to eaves). DesignBuilder's automatic computation of zone height is generally the average height of walls and would need correcting for a space with a pitched roof. In cases where there is floor space excluded or holes drawn in the floor then the calculated zone height will be higher and could result in less accurate results. Note that for DSM calculations zone height is not required.