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Changelog

destep 0.0.0.9000

  • Distinguish source weather field errors from ambiguous or inconsistent hour interpretations without changing checks, thresholds, source values or radiation-time selection (#54).

  • Reject unsupported louver types, missing active shading types, and stale shading geometry with source-object diagnostics before conversion (#50).

  • Preserve complete source surfaces with necessary local cuts only; retain shared-wall ownership and coordinates, reject opening-area loss, and report source-shell tolerance limits (#49).

  • Add explicit standalone sensible-gain feedback, standard-density ventilation and target-state ventilation prediction options, retaining existing defaults and documenting their version requirements and control approximations (#53).

  • Retain effective row K, ordered emissivities and SC-derived source angle optics in one direct equivalent window path; audit source radiation weights and declare native allocation, absorption-node and heat-capacity limits. No optical prepass or result replay is used (#52).

  • Preserve blank optional equipment-list fractions as the unchanged default of one across supported generation versions, without replacing existing schedules or required fields (#51).

  • Preserve constant-one sequential load fractions when upgrading dry-gain models from EnergyPlus 9.0.1. Explicit default schedules prevent false incomplete-equipment-group errors with released eplusr 0.17.0 (#48).

  • Restore window-side ownership stored as OF_ROOM = -1 from the corresponding explicit host side during conversion. Unique, valid source relationships are required; ambiguous references and conflicting bindings stop conversion. Geometry and thermal inputs are retained. The warning, conversion audit and saved IDF comments record every restoration; the default input copy is preserved (#45).

  • Report missing enclosure-side and middle-plane references with the source enclosure ID, field and saved reference before processing surface geometry. The structured error preserves these records without changing the input (#47).

  • Warn when effective internal gains use separate surrounding-surface, floor and roof radiant fractions that are not projected to EnergyPlus. The source air/total-radiant split and existing target inputs are preserved; the warning records the affected gain families and distribution modes (#48).

  • Warn before simulation when conditioned-room heating setpoints exceed cooling setpoints during positive AC availability hours. Diagnostics identify heating, cooling and availability schedules, affected rooms, the first conflicting hour and total conflicting hours. Preserve all schedule values and retain the diagnostics in conversion$schedules$temperature_conflicts (#48).

  • Prefer direct diagonal partitions for concave faces and required room-shell junctions before triangulation. Preserve every boundary segment and reuse the existing opening-aware and center-fan fallbacks when a direct partition cannot satisfy the geometry constraints (#47).

  • Preserve source outdoor, ground, and interzone boundaries independently of storey multipliers, replacing cyclic floor/ceiling rewiring. Unequal-multiplier interzone pairs generate a warning and an explicit conversion audit table; their weighted outputs cannot be assumed to describe balanced physical whole-building heat transfer. Convex source faces remain intact unless a geometry check requires local splitting. Thermal equivalence to DeST still requires separate validation (#47).

  • Reject negative source people counts and lighting/equipment power bounds instead of dropping them or changing their hourly profiles. AHU water schedule references must be exact integers, and water temperatures use the shared annual decoder with explicit missing-value checks. EPW source flags are generated in batches while preserving every positional code (#44).

  • to_epw(radiation_time = "auto") compares the centered and hour-start intervals and selects only a uniquely passing candidate. Ambiguous and wholly inconsistent inputs stop with both diagnostics; successful audits retain both candidates and the inferred selection reason. The existing default remains "centered", an approximation rather than a confirmed timestamp definition for every DeST weather source (#43).

  • to_epw(radiation_time = "hour_start") supports hourly interval weather imported with zero-based indices, including the ASHRAE 140 TF TMY3 data. The default retains the existing centered approximation. The selected convention is recorded in the EPW header and audit; source GHI/DHI and row order are preserved. Radiation inconsistent with sunlight now fails with source hours instead of silently discarding positive beam radiation (#43).

  • Model conversion is now exported as to_idf(), paired with to_epw(). Conversion choices use destep_opts(); target terrain, solar distribution and shadow-update overrides have been removed from that constructor. Their EnergyPlus defaults are retained and users can edit the returned IDF. HVAC help distinguishes supported source mappings, equivalent assumptions and unsupported selected equipment (#42).

  • Reject noninteger system property references through the shared source reader, identify supply-humidity EMS in conversion audits, and load water changeover schedules in batches without changing their hourly values (#41).

  • Duct-network support checks now apply only to converted air systems. Unused AHUs no longer block conversion; unsupported selected networks report their source system, AHU and network identifiers (#41).

  • Sensible heat recovery no longer inherits the HVAC template’s fixed 5 C outlet temperature limit. The native exchanger default preserves the source efficiency without this extra restriction. Conversion notes now state explicitly that heat-recovery pressure loss is not separately mapped (#41).

  • Multizone VAV electric humidification now retains source room RH schedules and terminal minimum/maximum airflow. Native critical-zone control uses actual terminal flow; no humidity-control EMS or user option is added. Active VAV dehumidification remains unsupported after native-control convergence failures in independent variable-flow probes (#41).

  • Multizone CAV room humidity upper bounds now use native critical-zone control on the existing cooling coil. Each room retains its paired RH schedules; combined humidification and dehumidification share the same humidistats. Explicit 1e-9 to 1 kg/kg target guards avoid native fixed humidity bounds. Equipment limits and native temperature/humidity tradeoffs remain; no reheat or EMS is added for this control (#41).

  • Multizone CAV electric humidification now retains each room’s RH schedules and uses native critical-zone control on the shared air loop. Explicit numerical humidity-ratio guards (1e-9 to 1 kg/kg) replace native defaults that can add humidity at zero room demand or clip higher demands. These guards are target settings, not source limits; demands outside them are not represented. Equipment capacity and saturation remain unchanged. Multizone VAV dehumidification and multizone supply-RH bounds remain unsupported (#41).

  • Single-zone electric humidification now reads linked supply minimum-RH schedules, including schedules used only by system extended properties. Necessary EMS converts RH to humidity ratio at current supply temperature and pressure while retaining native room demand and equipment capacity. Compact/file schedules and shared fraction/percent references are retained; supply maximum-RH control remains unsupported (#41).

  • Single-zone CAV room humidity upper bounds now control the existing cooling coil through native EnergyPlus temperature/humidity control. Heating and cooling moisture controls share one room humidistat. Source temperature targets remain, but humidity control can override them; unmet requirements are possible and DeST AHU optimization is not reproduced. No reheat or EMS is added for this control. Restrictive supply-RH upper bounds remain unsupported (#41).

  • Build conversion audit metadata and saved comments after IDF transition so reported object and simulation settings match the requested target (#39).

  • Corrected geometry regression expectations for the known pre-9.4 SimpleGlazing diagnostic emitted during baseline generation before version transition. Unexpected warnings and severe geometry errors remain failures (#39).

  • Generate IDF objects against the supported baseline dictionary, then use eplusr to transition to the requested EnergyPlus version. Coordinate prescribed moisture and physical HVAC support with target capabilities (#39).

  • Validate supply-temperature schedule IDs before integer coercion and use the shared decoder to reject incomplete or oversized annual payloads. Missing hourly temperatures and duplicate selected schedule IDs now fail at the source reader (#38).

  • Enforce source room ventilation minima for explicit outdoor-air allocations, reject unused single-zone allocations, and keep return-fan power overrides independent of the supply-fan curve. Centralize linked integer properties in the source-reader module (#38).

  • Map supported DeST terminal capacities, airflow bounds, selected products and prescribed water boundaries to connected EnergyPlus HVAC objects. Resolve source ownership and linked schedules, retain required moisture inputs, and diagnose unsupported selected equipment explicitly (#38).

  • Select relative-humidity schedules only from effective conditioned-room types. Unused catalogue entries and legacy room-group RH fields no longer block conversion or change the units of unrelated schedules. Resolve shared RH names for both bounds in one database pass (#37).

  • Use percent-compatible target schedule limits after RH conversion while preserving shared fractional schedules and decoded source inputs (#37).

  • Keep development validation records local and exclude them from distributed package files (#37).

  • Unified source conversion settings in to_eplus(options = ) and destep_opts(). The "objects" preset preserves source inputs, with explicit schedule, HVAC, surface-convection and target simulation settings (#37).

  • Replaced weekday-dependent source schedules with date-based compact or file schedules that preserve all 8760 hourly values and unit conversions. Added explicit simulation day ranges on a non-leap calendar (#37).

  • Split people, lighting, equipment and prescribed moisture conversion into dedicated modules. Retained radiant-fraction precision and represented nominal people sensible heat and moisture independently. Moisture requires EnergyPlus 9.1 or newer and remains incompatible with the current 9.0.1 physical HVAC path; rapid temperature changes can leave a one-step residual. Temperature-dependent occupant feedback and humidity caps are not reproduced (#37).

  • Retired DeST-specific window angle tables, surface heat/solar distribution, sky-boundary prepasses, occupant feedback and neighbor-air approximations, together with the "dest" preset and their options. Conversion uses native EnergyPlus solar and exterior heat-balance calculations, retains coupled interzone constructions and fixed source convection, and records the remaining window, furniture and ground-depth assumptions (#37).

  • Diagnose unsupported or invalid window inputs with source identifiers. Aggregate K/SC windows retain the documented SimpleGlazing approximation; unexpressed face emissivities remain visible in conversion metadata. Apply automatic soil per construction and reject unverified non-floor ground-contact stacks (#37).

  • Honor saved VARIANT_VENT = 0 by retaining minimum ventilation and omitting its variable increment. Record the fallback when the saved switch is absent. Preserve opaque SHADING.ROU in generated shading reflectance properties; reflection remains controlled by the selected solar-distribution method (#37).

  • Keep minimum outdoor ventilation for ROOM_GROUP.IS_AC_ROOM = 0 instead of adding the variable ventilation increment to unconditioned rooms. Retain the increment for AC-enabled room groups independently of the AC availability schedule, following controlled native DeST checks. Record the source flag and the minimum-only rule in the ventilation audit. Non-AC rooms validate the consumed minimum without requiring unused maximum or temperature-range inputs (#48).

  • Fixed exposed-floor outside absorptance conversion to preserve literal zero values. The converter no longer substitutes unrelated exterior-wall or default material properties, which could introduce ground-reflected solar gains absent from the DeST input (#36).

  • Added explicit source_options$exterior_boundary = "dest_sky" for the verified vertical/horizontal DeST sky boundary. It preserves per-face coefficients and the saved sky switch, records explicit run overrides, and uses target-weather time tables without surface-temperature feedback. Window boundaries use EMS to copy the current time-table value through the supported surface weather inputs. Check and coverage workflows now install EnergyPlus 26.1 alongside 23.1 (#36).

  • Fixed window_optics = "dest_solar" to preserve each window’s inside and outside surface blackness instead of using a fixed emissivity of 0.84. Windows sharing one optical type retain separate thermal properties when needed (#36).

  • Added opt-in source_distribution = "dest" to to_eplus() for EnergyPlus 26.1 ideal-loads models. Source converters supply their own heat metadata; net receiving areas and window distribution modes are extracted automatically. Weather-specific solar prepasses are reused only after checking model, file, engine and output identities. Generated time tables retain literal source fractions and deduplicate identical columns. Coupled interzone surfaces retain their original surface references. Whole-school equivalence and updated ASHRAE 140 acceptance remain separate validation tasks (#36).

  • Fixed CI initialization by replacing the removed Homebrew Actions master reference with the upstream recommended pinned release (#34).

  • Extended thermal-source conversion and supported physical HVAC assembly, with explicit validation limits for whole-building comparisons (#34).

  • Simplified the README to project background, features, installation, and a usage example showing IDF and EPW object summaries, with links to conversion help and release notes (#34).

  • Kept source metadata with the owning people, lighting, and equipment converters in conv-people.R, and furniture validation in conv-furniture.R. The internal conv-source.R module now handles generic source allocation and inventory checks.

  • Added opt-in window_optics = "dest_solar" for exterior two/three-pane aggregate windows in EnergyPlus 23.1 or newer. It derives solar angle tables from DeST SC and pane count, preserving the normal-transmittance meaning of 0.87 * SC rather than treating it as SHGC. The legacy default is unchanged. The solar-only representation retains glass resistance and exposed emissivity; daylighting, native glass storage, sky exchange, and room solar recipient allocation remain outside this option.

  • Applied ROOM_TYPE_DATA.L_HEAT_RATE to room lighting heat while preserving the original lighting electricity consumption. An unmetered signed sensible source follows the same minimum/variable schedules and convective/radiant fractions. Native zero-source and independent ratio checks confirm the multiplication rule; this correction does not require EMS.

  • Converted effective ROOM_TYPE_DATA.FURNITURE_COEF to a two-sided storage slab using the area-dependent rule verified against DeST 0.2.230705. Coefficients at or below one add no storage. Independent capacity and free-floating temperature checks support the EnergyPlus InternalMass representation; cross-engine whole-building equivalence remains unresolved.

  • Preserved glass thermal resistance when converting aggregate DeST window K values: DeST’s nominal surface films and the EnergyPlus simple-glazing winter films differ. Values outside the simple-glazing model’s representable range now fail explicitly instead of silently changing material resistance.

  • Converted nonzero ROOM_TYPE_DATA.E_MIN_HUM/E_MAX_HUM equipment moisture using the source equipment schedule and total/per-area basis, retaining independent sensible ElectricEquipment gains. An unmetered, all-latent OtherEquipment source uses EMS vapor-enthalpy correction to preserve the kg/h input without adding electricity consumption. The correction uses the latest available zone temperature; abrupt changes can leave a one-zone-step residual. This mapping requires EnergyPlus 9.1 or newer; older targets and invalid negative, non-finite, or inverted source ranges still fail explicitly.

  • Preserved full ROOM.AREA precision in Zone floor area, avoiding rounding bias in per-area sensible and moisture gains.

  • Extended DeST-to-EnergyPlus translation across Calload controls, weather, constructions, openings, and supported physical HVAC paths, while retaining explicit errors for unsupported AC_SYS_TYPE values (#33).

  • Stopped to_eplus() with an explicit list of source systems when a DeST model contains an unsupported AC_SYS_TYPE other than 0 or 1, preventing unsupported HVAC families from being omitted silently.

  • Corrected the AHU.FAN schema description: the field stores the rated air flow of the selected cooling or dehumidification device in m3/h, rather than a fan or equipment identifier.

  • Fixed DeST lighting heat-gain conversion so L_DIST_MODE is represented without introducing an unrelated EnergyPlus visible-light fraction, and stopped mapping the DeST heat-to-electricity ratio to daylighting replaceability.

  • Reconciled type-1 terminal minimum flows when their sum falls less than 0.01% below the DeST system minimum outdoor-air flow, preserving zone shares with an explicit warning while rejecting larger air-balance conflicts.

  • Warned when aggregate WindowMaterial:SimpleGlazingSystem objects target EnergyPlus 9.0 through 9.3, whose angular-reflectance implementation was corrected in EnergyPlus 9.4.

  • Mapped ordinary-glass SYS_WINDOW fallback layers to WindowMaterial:Glazing:RefractionExtinctionMethod using DeST thickness, conductivity, refractive index, extinction coefficient, and emissivity.

  • Preserved full DeST site-coordinate precision and decoded the standard meridian in ENVIRONMENT.PROPERTY into the EnergyPlus site time zone.

  • Preserved DeST schedules shared by humidity and non-humidity fields by generating a separate percent-valued copy for ZoneControl:Humidistat.

  • Fixed People field generation for EnergyPlus 9.0.1 by resolving the version-specific design-level field names from the selected target IDD.

  • Converted supported DeST exterior window overhangs and side fins to Shading:Zone:Detailed polygons.

  • Resolved missing exterior absorptance sentinels on exposed DeST air floors without overwriting their independent room-side surface properties.

  • Converted DeST thermally massless material sentinels to Material:NoMass, preserving their resistance-only representation.

  • Converted DeST zero and near-zero specific-heat material encodings to Material:NoMass, preserving their source thermal resistance without inventing heat capacity.

  • Normalized surface and window vertex starts to EnergyPlus’s declared upper-left corner.

  • Preserved ENVIRONMENT.GROUND_REFLECT_COEF by writing the same DeST ground reflectance to all twelve Site:GroundReflectance monthly fields.

  • Fixed exterior-wall and roof layer order by retaining DeST’s stored outside-to-inside sequence, while keeping reversed constructions for room-to-ground and reciprocal interzone faces.

  • Fixed direct-normal radiation derived from hourly DeST weather by using the centered-hour mean solar altitude, avoiding nonphysical sunrise and sunset values in official prototype models.

  • Preserved DeST surface convection coefficients, solar absorptance, and blackness using per-surface convection objects and deduplicated exposed-layer construction clones, while retaining reciprocal interzone layer order.

  • Preserved independent DeST window convection coefficients by reading the window SIDE1 and SIDE2 surface records. Converted doors as opaque subsurfaces with reciprocal construction order while inheriting the effective face properties and convection coefficients of their owning enclosures.

  • Warned when a DeST window references transmitted-solar DIST_MODE fractions, because the per-window distribution has no established direct EnergyPlus projection and would otherwise be omitted silently.

  • Warned when ROOM_GROUP.OF_AC_SYS references a physical DeST air-conditioning system, reporting its raw system type, outdoor-air control, and available flow limits when the default hvac = "ideal_loads" conversion omits its fans, coils, air loop, plant equipment, and system-level outputs.

  • Expanded hvac = "physical" conversion to group conditioned rooms by AC_SYS, generate multiple supported air loops in one model, accept any positive room count for type-1 VAV terminal-reheat systems, and accept multizone type-0 constant-volume terminal-reheat systems. One-room type-0 systems retain their dedicated constant-volume path.

  • Type-1 paths preserve each room’s source minimum and maximum terminal flow in direct AirTerminal:SingleDuct:VAV:Reheat objects and use variable supply and return fans. Multizone type-0 paths fix every terminal minimum to its maximum and use constant-volume supply and return fans. Each air loop balances its explicit per-zone outdoor-air allocation through zone exhaust fans.

  • Physical paths accept FRESH_AIR_TYPE 1, 5, or 6. Outdoor-air type 1 uses the DeST minimum as a fixed flow and retains the maximum as a source capacity boundary; types 5 and 6 map the source limits to EnergyPlus differential dry-bulb and differential enthalpy economizers.

  • Physical paths preserve DeST system ownership, airflow limits, availability, and room temperature schedules in direct EnergyPlus 9.0.1 objects. Equipment performance and zone allocation values missing from the DeST model must be supplied through path-specific hvac_options. One flat option list and one synthesized shared plant currently apply to all generated air loops.

  • Existing real-model numerical regression coverage remains one-room type 0, two-room type 0, and two-room type 1; larger zone counts and multiple-system assembly require additional real-model numerical evidence.

  • Multizone physical HVAC paths use matching AC_SYS.SUPPLY_T_MIN and SUPPLY_T_MAX trajectories for the cooling-coil setpoint and their minimum for cooling sizing; distinct trajectories stop with an explicit unsupported error.

  • Fixed Calload control mapping to resolve availability, temperature, and humidity schedules through ROOM.TYPE and ROOM_TYPE_DATA, while retaining ROOM_GROUP.IS_AC_ROOM as the room-conditioning eligibility flag.

  • Restored the 1.2 m soil layer that DeST automatically appends to serialized ground-floor constructions but does not store in the source ACCDB tables.

  • Mapped ROOM_RELATION.VENT_TYPE=1 to a minimum-ACH ZoneVentilation:DesignFlowRate plus a normalized max-minus-min supplement enabled while outdoor temperature lies between the room-type heating and cooling setpoint schedules. This implements DeST’s documented range rule but deliberately does not infer an HVAC-availability gate or claim equivalence to DeST’s undocumented solver-state coupling.

  • Removed the practical IdealLoads supply-humidity limitation from load-only models, and set an explicit 12-timestep-per-hour resolution so converted hourly relative-humidity bounds converge reproducibly.

  • Reduced converted geometry fragmentation by preserving planar convex surfaces and rectangular windows, while making reciprocal interzone-window partitions deterministic and centralizing EnergyPlus geometry tolerances (#32).

  • Fixed Schedule:Week:Compact semantic corruption by keeping day-type groups paired with their Schedule:Day IDs when moving AllOtherDays to the final field group, and anchored converted annual run periods to DeST’s Monday-first calendar (#32).

  • Added a traceable typical-storey approximation for multiplied DeST storeys, pairing lower and upper repeated-floor boundaries at equal EnergyPlus zone multipliers while making the first/top cut interfaces adiabatic (#32).

  • Added to_epw() to convert a uniquely selected, complete DeST CLIMATE_DATA year into an EnergyPlus weather object, including relative-humidity and solar-radiation derivations (#32).

  • Preserved aggregate window area across partitioned host surfaces by choosing window-aware surface triangulations and applying an infinitesimal inward boundary offset accepted by EnergyPlus geometry checks (#32).

  • Preserved reciprocal DeST construction direction by emitting explicit reversed constructions for room-to-peer SIDE1 surfaces and interzone windows (#32).

  • Preserved distinct opaque and transparent door constructions, including thickness-dependent material identities and transparent-door material lookup through DeST application identifiers (#32).

  • Added humidity schedule and control conversion for ZoneControl:Humidistat (#32).

  • Preserved positive minimum people, lighting, and electric-equipment gains as separate always-on objects, and rejected source minimums that exceed their corresponding maximum values (#32).

  • Made DeST name normalization dependency-aware and prefixed storeys and rooms with their owning building in multi-building models, keeping converted EnergyPlus references unique and resolvable (#32).

  • Hardened Access-to-SQLite failure cleanup so failed ODBC or MDBTools attempts close partially created SQLite targets before fallback or error propagation (#32).

  • Added dedicated Schedule:Week:Compact generation when December 31 has a unique daily profile, allowing schedule__convert_week() to preserve schedules that cannot reuse one of the first 52 weeks (#30).

  • Preserved DeST aggregate window thermal and optical performance by converting WINDOW_TYPE_DATA records to WindowMaterial:SimpleGlazingSystem objects, with targeted SYS_WINDOW fallback handling for unavailable or invalid type data (#28).

  • Ignored missing and zero-valued DeST schedule references during conversion, preventing nullable reserved fields from producing invalid SQL (#26).

  • Preserved DeST enclosure geometry during EnergyPlus conversion by correcting surface types, outward normals, reciprocal boundary references, true-north rotation, EnergyPlus-tolerance vertex handling, shared-edge topology, reciprocal interzone windows, and windows crossing host partitions (#24).

  • Fixed EnergyPlus simulation initialization for converted DeST models by adding an annual run period and normalizing schedule day types, surface polygons, material thicknesses, and zone thermostat coverage (#22).

  • Added GROUND_DATA conversion to Site:GroundTemperature:BuildingSurface using monthly averages of the selected hourly ground-temperature series (#20).

  • Added occupant outdoor-air conversion from OCCUPANT_GAINS.MIN_REQUIRE_FRESH_AIR to DesignSpecification:OutdoorAir, with IdealLoads systems referencing the converted outdoor-air objects (#19).

  • Added ROOM_GROUP ideal-loads conversion to create ZoneHVAC:IdealLoadsAirSystem zone equipment using DeST air-conditioning availability schedules (#18).

  • Added ROOM_GROUP thermostat/setpoint conversion to shared ThermostatSetpoint:DualSetpoint objects and per-zone ZoneControl:Thermostat controls (#17).

  • Added CI coverage for the full real DeST ACCDB to SQLite to EnergyPlus IDF conversion path using a cached GitHub release fixture (#16).

  • Fixed Schedule:Week:Compact day schedule references generated from SCHEDULE_YEAR, preventing missing Schedule:Day Name values in converted EnergyPlus schedules (#15).

  • Added ROOM_RELATION outdoor ventilation conversion to ZoneVentilation:DesignFlowRate, using the referenced air-change schedule and keeping inter-zone mixing deferred (#14).

  • Added normalized DeST schema catalog TSV assets and schema coverage diagnostics for comparing real SQLite models against the catalog (#10).

  • Cataloged ROOM_TYPE_DATA as the room-type template table behind ROOM.TYPE, including internal-gain defaults and setpoint schedule metadata (#11).

  • Cataloged ROOM_RELATION as the observed room ventilation/air-exchange relation table, using Access field descriptions as the field-semantics source of truth (#12).

  • Added fields_cn.tsv with Access field descriptions extracted from a real DeST model, and refreshed English field semantics from those comments (#13).