Reviewing Cooling Design Output

You can review Cooling design output in 2 ways:

• Detailed results - half-hourly heat balance and inside conditions displayed on 'Analysis' tab.
• Summary table - cooling capacity data for each zone on the Summary tab.

To update the data using different calculation options, click Update (Ctrl-U).Data Options

The General tab on the Cooling design Display options panel provides options for controlling the data displayed in the Simulation data display screen.  General Display options are grouped under three headers:

• Data - control the data displayed.
• Y-axis - for customising the layout of the Y-axis.
• Appearance - for customising the style and appearance of the graphics.

The Detailed tab on the Display Options panel provides controls which allow you to select exactly the data items you wish to display.  

Data Options

Data

Select an option to indicate the data you wish to display:

• 1-All - fabric and ventilation heat gains/losses, internal gains (not Heating Design), temperatures and outside dry-bulb air temperature.
• 2-Site data - all site data.
• 3-Comfort - inside air, the radiant and comfort temperatures, relative humidity, ASHRAE 55 and various comfort indices.
• 4-Internal gains - internal gains including equipment, lighting, occupancy, solar and HVAC heating/cooling delivery.
• 5-Fabric and ventilation - heat gains to the space from the surface element (walls, floors, ceilings etc.) and ventilation. Negative values indicate heat loss from the space.

Tip: to update the data using different calculation options, click Update (Ctrl-U).

Show as

You can display the data in one of four ways:

• 1-Graph - displays the data on the screen in graphical format. The default option.
• 2-Grid - you should select this option to export data in csv spreadsheet format. This export format can be loaded to Results Viewer for further analysis and comparison.
• 3-Graph and table - the same as 1-Graph but also includes a basic tabular display below the graph.
• 4-Table - the same basic table format displayed for the 3-Graph and table option, but without the graph.

Show month

If you ran cooling design calculations for more than 1 month then you can select the month to view detailed results from the droplist. The first item on the droplist of available months is 0-Peak which, when selected, is used by DesignBuilder to automatically select the month of peak cooling load. In this case a further Peak definition option is displayed allowing you to select how the peak month is defined. See below.

Peak definition

When the 0-Peak month has been selected in the Show month droplist (above) and you are at zone level or below, this additional selection is displayed to allow you to define whether "peak month" refers to the peak for the current zone or for the whole building. Select from:

• 1-Building peak where data for the month of the building peak sensible cooling load is displayed.
• 2-Zone peak where data for the month of the currently selected zone peak sensible cooling load is displayed.

Normalise by floor area

Check this option if you wish building, block and zone data to be displayed 'per floor area',  i.e. /m2 or /ft2, and surface and opening data to be displayed 'per surface or opening area'.

At building, block or zone level you can select the floor area to use as the denominator from the options:

• 1-All areas - Total area is used,
• 2-Occupied area - just occupied areas are used.

Note: you can only select 1-All areas if the building and block data includes occupied areas as set in Include unoccupied zones in block and building totals and averages option in Cooling design Output options,  Likewise you can only select 2-Occupied area if the building and block data excludes occupied areas.

Y-Axis Options

These options give you control over how the Y-axis is displayed.

Lock min/max

This option locks the extent of the Y-axes so that they keep their current maximum and minimum values.  This allows consistent comparison with the future results display. The Y-axis keeps its current settings until you unlock it again.

You can achieve the same effect by clicking on the 'Lock Y-axis min/max values' toolbar command.

When you lock the Y-axis the current settings are stored and displayed for each of the available Y-axes. You can edit any of these to get a more precise setting.  Remember to click on the Apply button when you are ready to register a change to any numeric display option data.

Overlap multiple axes

Option allows you to save space on the Y-axis allowing different axes to overlap.

Separate axes

Check this option to add a vertical space between each of the displayed axes.

Normalise by floor area

Check this option if you wish data to be displayed 'per floor area'  i.e. /m2 or /ft2.

Appearance

You can control the details of the presentation of the graphical output by making selections on the Display Options panel under the Appearance header.

EnergyPlus Script

You can view the input data script used to calculate these results by selecting the 'Tools | Display simulation input script' menu option.  If you do not have the EnergyPlus IDF editor installed, then you should associate the .idf file extension with a text editor to make this option work.

Note: this shows the script stored with the model just before the simulation not the in.idf file stored in the EnergyPlus folder.