Once you have assigned the rooms in your model to NVHR unit groups as appropriate (and then performed any subsequent manual edits to Space Data, profiles, templates and so on), the model should be ready to simulate. The relevant Navigator actions will be enabled when you click the checkbox to the right of the Assign selected rooms to the appropriate NVHR® system action (acknowledging that you have completed the action).
Note that the Make Manual Edits actions are optional – you will be able to continue without them. However, it is recommended that you review these items prior to simulation to ensure that the assigned options are valid for your model intent (particularly review the assignment of MacroFlo opening types on windows and doors that are not assigned to the NVHR units, as these will have been set as off continuously prior to NVHR unit group assignment).
In order to enable the Solar Pre-simulation and Thermal Simulation steps, you should perform the Ensure that all rooms assigned to NVHR® systems are valid action – this will attempt to correct any problems with the NVHR data on any room that is marked with an exclamation mark.
If one or more rooms could not be corrected automatically, an alert should display at the bottom-right of the VE window indicating the number of rooms that need manual attention.
In this situation, you should review the problems for each invalid room by hovering the mouse over each room’s exclamation mark – you can then take appropriate action to resolve the issue and then retry this step. Once all assigned rooms are valid, the following alert should display at the bottom-right of the VE window:
You should then click the checkbox to the right of the Ensure that all rooms assigned to NVHR® systems are valid action to enable the actions for Solar Pre-Simulation and Thermal Simulation.
You can then click the Simulate option under Solar Pre-simulation – this will switch the VE into SunCast view and run the solar shading calculations.
Once completed, clicking the Simulate System action under Thermal Simulation will switch to Apache view and prepare to run an Apache Simulation. In order to effectively simulate and view results for the NVHR, the following simulation options are required:
- Enable SunCast Link? should be active
- MacroFlo Link? should be active
- Auxiliary ventilation air exchange? should be active
- Natural ventilation air exchange? should be active
- All NVHR-assigned rooms should be selected for detailed output
- Sensible internal gains breakdown should be active for detailed output
The Simulate System action will first check your current simulation options to see if they match these desired values – if not, a message will be displayed to indicate this:
You can use the Show Details button at the bottom-left to display information on which setting(s) are not at the expected value. If you would like the settings to be automatically updated to be optimal for simulating NVHR, you can click the Update Simulation Options for NVHR® button – otherwise, click the Use Existing Simulation Options button to continue with your current simulation options.
The standard Apache Simulation window should then appear, allowing you to configure which period you want the simulation to cover. Once ready, you can start the simulation by clicking the Simulate button.
Note that due to the requirement of detailed output for the assigned rooms, the simulation may take some time to run. Once completed, you should switch to VistaPro to view and analyse the results.
