SIM-VICUS

NEXT LEVEL BUILDING AND DISTRICT ENERGY SIMULATION

SIM-VICUS is a 3D modeling environment for building and district networks and an innovative dynamic simulation engine (NANDRAD). https://sim-vicus.de hosts the official webpage with user-centered information. Development-related information is stored and handled on github.

Quality Assurance

We have continuous integration scripts running (build-test of all C/C++ code) and solver regression tests. For details, see Jenkins.

Test	Result
CI - Linux 64-bit (Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS; Qt 5.12.9)
CI - Windows 64-bit (Win10, VC 2019, Qt 5.15.2)
CI - MacOS 64-bit (10.11 "El Capitan", Qt 5.11.3)	currently disabled...Mac releases are built on demand
Solver regression test (correctly simulating test suite)

CI tests are located in directory data/tests. See developer documentation for information about the Python test suite scripts.

Validation

The NANDRAD solver is thoroughly validated with the SimQuality test suite and other published validation test cases. The validation suite(s) are in directory data/validation with summary given on the Validation-Wiki-readme page.

Repo-Documentation

The README.md files are written with MarkDown syntax, GitHub flavour, so that they can be read in the web-view of github. All extensive documentation is written in AsciiDoctor format inside the doc directory.

Source code documentation is done with Doxygen, which generates its documentation for the entire source code and stores the output in docs/api. For this purpose run the NandradSolver.doxyfile in the NandradSolver/doc directory through Doxygen.

General documentation can be also found inside the overview.

Mailing List

Community communication is handled through our mailing list:

https://www.listserv.dfn.de/sympa/info/sim-vicus

Developer Info

Every developer has to read the developer documentation carefully!

Directory Structure

bin                  - binaries
build                - build scripts and session projects
data                 - all kinds of data files, including test suite
doc                  - base directory for all documentation, see doc/README.md for details
docs                 - generated AsciiDoctor-based documentation, displayed in github-pages
externals            - libraries including third-party libs
FMUs                 - base directory for source code of FMUs that extend NANDRAD solver functionality 
lib_x64              - contains generated x64 libraries (nothing in here except .gitignore)
NandradCodeGenerator - the NANDRAD code generator (keyword list and serialization support)
NandradDevTests      - code snippeds used only during development/testing, not for production code, may not compile
NandradFMUGenerator  - GUI tool for FMU export configuration and FMU generation
NandradSolver        - sources for the NANDRAD command line solver
NandradSolverFMI     - sources for the NANDRAD Functional Mock-Up Interface module
scripts              - Python scripts (test suite etc.)
SIM-VICUS            - sources for the SIM-VICUS user interface
View3D               - View3D program from NIST

Libraries

NANDRAD Solver and SIM-VICUS use a bunch of common libraries from IBK and external/third-party libraries:

• CCM - Climate Calculation Module (CCM), implements climate data loading and calculation of solar radiation loads
• clipper - implements robust clipping calculation for two-dimensional polygons
• RoomClipper - implements robust clipping and connection generation via component instances of VICUS rooms and their surfaces
• DataIO - utility lib for writing DataIO output containers (needed when profiles across wall constructions are written)
• IBK - core utility library, extends c++ standard library by useful functions (so we do not need boost and other heavy libs)
• IBKMK - IBK math kernel lib, low level optimized routines for efficient number crunching
• IDFReader - library for IDF file parsing and data import to VICUS
• IntegratorFramework - library that includes several numerical integration libraries and provides a convenient framework to error-controlled time integration
• ITSOL2 - implements ILUT preconditioner (included in IntegratorFramework, this directory contains the original sources)
• libdxfrw - library to read and write DXF files in both formats, ascii and binary form. It also has rudimentary capabilities to read DWG files
• Nandrad - the NANDRAD data model library (holds the project data for the NANDRAD solver)
• QtExt - Qt extension library from IBK, lots of utility functions and widgets to assist with UI development
• QuaZIP - zip-support (needed for creating FMU archives)
• qwt - plotting library/charts
• Shading - implements shading factors calculation
• SuiteSparse - implements sparse direct solver KLU
• sundials - includes CVODE integrator, and GMRES and BiCGStab iterative les solvers
• TiCPP - TinyXML parser library, used for reading/writing XML files
• Vicus - SIM-VICUS data model library (holds the data model for the user interface)
• Zeppelin - graphing library (see Graf Zeppelin :-), needed to determine evaluation order of the NANDRAD model objects