Acquisition of building geometry in the simulation of energy performance

Building geometry is essential to any simulation of building performance. This paper examines from the users’ point of view the importing of building geometry into simulation of energy performance. It discusses the basic options in moving from two- to three-dimensional definition of geometry and the ways to import that geometry into energy simulation. The obvious answer lies in software interoperability. With the BLIS group of interoperable software one  can interactively import building geometry from CAD into EnergyPlus and dramatically reduce the effort needed for manual input.