News

eplusr 0.10.2

This is a patch update mainly to fix CRAN check errors on a strict Latin locale, with a bug fix.

Bug fixes

• $report_data() method in EplusSql class now correctly returns data if even if key_value is not given (#37)

eplusr 0.10.1

This is a patch update mainly to fix CRAN check errors, with few bug fixes.

Bug fixes

• $set() method in Idf class now does not try to convert all input strings into numbers (#32)
• $del() method in Idf class now also respects validation settings. You should be able to delete any object if current validation level does not include reference checking
• $del() method in Idf class now will only print object relation only if .ref_to or .ref_by is TRUE
• Now $set() method in Epw class will correctly reset leap year flag in the header (#32)
• Now $save() method in Epw class returns the path of saved file invisibly

eplusr 0.10.0

eplusr v0.10.0 introduces dozens of improvements, unfortunately also has some break changes. Detailed updates per class are as follow:

Idd Class

• $object() now takes a single class name and returns an IddObject.

• New method $objects() is added as the successor of $object() in previous versions.

• New method $object_relation() and $objects_in_relation() are added to get all objects that have relation (one refer to others or one referred by others).

• $object_in_group() has been deprecated in flavor of $objects_in_group().

• New method $to_table() and $to_string() are added to help easily extract internal IDD data in data.table format and string format respectively.

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

• S3 method str.Idd(), format.Idd() are added.

IddObject Class

• A constructor idd_object() has been added to help directly create IddObject. It takes a parent IDD version or an Idd object and a valid class name or class index, e.g. idd_object(8.8, "Material"), idd_object(use_idd(8.8), "Construction")

• New method $version() is added to extract the version of parent IDD.

• New method $field_relation() is added to extract the field relation in current class with other class fields.

• New method $has_ref(), $has_ref_to(), and $has_ref_by() are added to help to detect field relations

• New method $is_real_field() is added to detect if specified fields should have values of real numbers but not integers.

• New method $has_ref(), $has_ref_by(), $has_ref_to() are added to detect if specified fields refer to other fields or can be referred by other field in other classes.

• New method $to_table() and $to_string() are added to help easily extract internal IDD data in data.table format and string format respectively.

• field_possible() now does not need IdfObject data to run.

• Argument lower in $field_name() has been deprecated.

• $field_reference() in IddObject class has been deprecated in flavor of $field_relation().

• A brief argument is added in $print() with default value of FALSE. If TRUE, only the class name of the IddObject is printed.

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

• S3 method format.IddObject(), as.character.IddObject() and str.IddObject() are added which calls $to_string() and $print().

Idf Class

• An argument sorted is added in $class_name() and $group_name()to control whether to sort the returned value according to the occurrence in IDD or not.

• $definition() now only accepts one class name and returns a single IddObject, not a list of IddObject.

• $object() now takes a single object ID or name and returns an IdfObject.

• New method $objects() is added as the successor of $object() in previous versions.

• New method $object_unique() is added which returns an IdfObject in unique-object class, e.g. SimulaSimulationContrl. This makes it easy to directly extract and modify those objects, e.g. model$object_unique("SimulationContrl")$set(...).

• $object_in_class() now is deprecated in flavor of $objects_in_class().

• New method $objects_in_group() is added to get all objects in specified group.

• $search_object(), $search_value() and $replace_value() now can take same arguments as base::grepl() to further control the way it searches objects.

• $replace_value() now will perform validations when replacing value.

• Now all methods in Idf class that return IdfObjects will not convert object names into valid R names. The former conversion behavior is unnecessary and a little bit confusing.

• $add_object(), $set_object(), $del_object(), $ins_object() and $del_object() are now all deprecated. Please use $add(), $set(), $del() and insert() instead, which provide much cleaner syntax.

• New method $rename() is added which helps to modify only object names.

• New method $paste() is added which will parse contents that copied from IDF Editor using the Copy Obj button and directly insert them into current Idf.

• $validate() and $is_valid() now accepts an argument level. Also, a helper custom_validate() is added to customize what kind of validations to check.

• $string() is deprecated in flavor of $to_string() in Idf class.

• New method $to_table() is added which can extract object data into a data.table.

• The default value of deep argument in $clone() method is set to TRUE. As in almost all cases, a total cloned object is desired when calling $clone().

• plain argument is deprecated in $print() in IDF class. Because the same thing can be achieved using $to_string() and base::cat(). New argument zoom and order are added, which give more control on how detailed should the model be printed.

• New method $object_relation() and $objects_in_relation() are added to extract all objects in relation.

IdfObject Class

• New constructor idf_object() is added.

• New method $version() is added to get the underlying version of IDD.

• $get_comment(), $get_value() now have been deprecated in flavor of $comment() and $value()

• $comment() (former $get_comment()) now returns NULL if the object does not have any comment.

• $set_value() now has been deprecated in flavor of $set()

• $possible_value() now has been deprecated in flavor of $value_possible().

• $ref_from_object() and $has_ref_from() now have been deprecated in flavor of $ref_to_object() and $has_ref_to().

• $has_ref_by(), $has_ref_to() and $has_ref() now return a logical vector of the same length as field numbers.

• $validate() and $is_valid() now accepts an argument level. Also, a helper custom_validate() is added to customize what kind of validations to check.

• $string() and $table() are now deprecated in flavor of $to_string() and $to_table().

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

• S3 methods format.IdfObject(), as.character.IdfObject() and str.IdfObject() are added, which calls $to_string() and $value().

Epw Class

• Epw class has been totally rewritten which provides much more functionalities. Please refer to package documentation for details. All headers are parsed and can be retrieve in Epw class.

• The default value of deep in $clone() has been change to TRUE.

EplusSql Class

• New method $path_idf() is added to return the parent IDF file path.

• New arguments period, month, day, hour, minute, interval, simulation_days, day_type and environment_name are added in $report_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• New arguments report_name, report_for, table_name, column_name and row_name are added in $tabular_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

EplusJob Class

• New method $path() is added to return the path of IDF and/or EPW file of the job.

• New method $list_table(), $read_table() are added which provide the same functionalities as they are in EplusSql class.

• $clone() is now deprecated.

• New arguments period, month, day, hour, minute, interval, simulation_days, day_type and environment_name are added in $report_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• New arguments report_name, report_for, table_name, column_name and row_name are added in $tabular_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

ParametricJob Class

• New arguments force and copy_external are added in $run() which have the same effect as in $run() method in Idf class.

• New arguments period, month, day, hour, minute, interval, simulation_days, day_type and environment_name are added in $report_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• New arguments report_name, report_for, table_name, column_name and row_name are added in $tabular_data() which provide extra subsetting on the SQL file.

• $clone() method is now deprecated.

Miscellaneous

• Function read_err() is added which takes a path of an .err file, parses it and returns an ErrFile object.

• Functions is_eplus_ver(), is_idd_ver(), is_eplus_path(), is_idd(), is_idf(), is_iddobject(), is_idfobject() and is_epw() are now exported.

• Function custom_validate() and level_checks() are added to customize validation.

• Right now, all returned object and field names will remain what they are as in the IDF, instead of converting them into underscore style names in the returned lists.

• The num_digits option has been deprecated as formatting of numeric fields are now handled by R itself.

• Error will be given instead of warning if there is no build tag or multiple build tags found in input IDD.

• eplusr_option() accepts custom validate level using newly-added function custom_validate().

eplusr 0.9.4

New features

• Now you can directly download EnergyPlus Weather File (.epw) and Design Day File (.ddy) using new function download_weather(). It takes a regular expression as input, searches through EnergyPlus weather data base (stored in this package), download corresponding files and return the saved paths. Below are some examples:
  • Search locations that contains string "los angeles" and "tmy", return a menu to select which one(s) to download. Once selected, download both corresponding weather file(s) and design day file(s):

    download_weather("los angeles.*tmy", type = "all", ask = TRUE)

  • Same as above, expect that all files will be renamed to la.epw(ddy), la_1.epw(ddy), la_2.epw(ddy):

    download_weather("los angeles.*tmy", filename = "la", type = "all", ask = TRUE)

  • Search locations that contains string "beijing" and "cswd". If no more than 3 results found, directly download all weather files and save them to temporary directory.

    download_weather("beijing.*cswd", dir = tempdir(), type = "epw", ask = FALSE, max_match = 3)

Minor changes

• Now clean_wd() is run before every call to EnergyPlus.

Bug fixes

• $clone() method has been refactored for Idf and Idd class. This fix the issue that internal shared environments were not cloned in version 0.9.3.

• Fix the error that $save() and $string() in Idf class did not respect format argument.

• Fix the error that $apply_measure() in ParametricJob class did not respect .names argument.

eplusr 0.9.3

New features

• Add support for EnergyPlus v9.0.0.

Bug fixes

• Remove duplicates when update value references (#20).

eplusr 0.9.2

Break changes

• Clean up the dirty code that manually modifies $clone() method in R6 in order to be compatible with (#19). After this, deep has to be set to TRUE if a completed cloned copy is desired. Also, documentations on $clone() method in Epw, EplusJob, ParametricJob have been added.

Minor changes

• clean_wd() is called internally when running EnergyPlus models. This guarantees that the old output file from last simulation is cleaned up before the new simulation starts.

New features

• A new class EplusSql has been added. This makes it possible to directly retrieve simulation results without creating an EplusJob object which can only get simulation outputs after the job was successfully run before. It can be easily created using eplus_sql() function. However, it should be noted that, unlike EplusJob, there is no checking on whether the simulation is terminated or completed unsuccessfully, or the parent Idf has been changed since last simulation. This means that you may encounter some problems when retrieve data from an unsuccessful simulation. It is suggested to carefully go through the .err file to make sure the output data in the SQLite is correct and reliable. Currently, there are only few methods in EplusSql class which have some overlaps with theses in EplusJob, but more methods may be added in the future. For more details, please see the documentation of EplusSql.

• A new method $is_double_field() is added to IddObject class to check if specified fields should be double numbers

Bug fixes

• Fix the error of missing Idf file when dir is not NULL in $run() in Idf class.

eplusr 0.9.1

Minor changes

• Long lines in err files now will be wrapped when printed.

Bug fixes

• Fix the error when checking invalid extensible fields in value validation.

• Fix the error that value references did not get updated when setting values to NA in $set_value() in IdfObject and $set_object() in Idf.

eplusr 0.9.0

Break Changes

• parallel_backend argument in run_multi() has been removed, due to the reason that supporting remote parallel computing is out of the scope of this package. This makes it possible to remove both future and furrr package dependencies. The default behavior of run_multi() does not change if running on local machine, as it still runs multiple EnergyPlus instances in parallel.

• In run_idf() and run_multi(), eplus argument has been moved to be the last argument with default value setting to NULL. This will make them a little bit more convenient to run EnergyPlus without explicitly specify the version. If NULL, the version of EnergyPlus is automatically detected using the version field of input model. For example:

  # before
  run_idf(8.8, model.idf, weather.epw)
   
  # after
  run_idf(model.idf, weather.epw)

• Both argument echo and wait have been added to run_idf() and run_multi(). Unlike the behavior in eplusr 0.8.3 when echo is TRUE in run_idf(), right now echo only control whether to show the output from EnergyPlus command line interface. Please use wait to control whether to wait until the simulation is complete or not.

New features

• Package documentation has been heavily updated. Examples of every exported class and most functions have been added. Also, an example IDF file "1ZoneUncontrolled.idf" from EnergyPlus v8.8.0 is included in the package, which makes it possible to run most examples without installing EnergyPlus. Of cause, for examples in EplusJob and ParametricJob class, EnergyPlus installation is needed to run them successfully.

• The brilliant package crayon is used to support colorful printing of Idd, Idf, IddObject, IdfObject, Epw, EplusJob and ParametricJob classes.

• A new type of "character" validation has been added, which will check if field values should be characters but are not.

• A new option copy_external has been added in $run() in Idf class. If TRUE, the external files will also be copied into the output directory. Currently, only Schedule:File class is supported. This ensures that the output directory will have all files needed for the model to run.

• $validate() in Idf and IdfObject class will also check incomplete extensible groups. Extensible groups that only contain any empty field are treated as invalid.

• New methods $field_reference() and $field_possible() have been added into IddObject class. $field_possible() is basically the same as the $possible_value() in IdfObject class. This makes it possible to show all available references for a class that does not have any object yet. $field_reference() only returns all available reference values for specified fields. NOTE: $field_reference() and $field_possible() can only be used in IddObjects that are created using $definition() in Idf class and IdfObject class, and cannot be used in IddObjects that are created using $object() or equivalent in Idd class. This is because both methods need shared Idf value data to collect all reference values.

Minor changes

• use_eplus() now returns an invisible list of EnergyPlus configure data instead of NULL.

• The default value of dir argument in download_eplus() has been removed, which enforce the user to explicitly specify the directory to save EnergyPlus installer file, as per CRAN reviewer comment.

• A new option "auto" for download argument in use_idd() has been added, which will automatically download corresponding EnergyPlus IDD file if the file or Idd object is currently not available.

• The dir argument in install_eplus() has been removed, as per CRAN reviewer comments. The EnergyPlus installer file will be saved into tempdir().

• The default value of dir argument in $run() in Idf class has been removed, as per CRAN reviewer comments. Users can explicitly set dir to NULL if they want to use the directory of input IDF file.

• The default value of echo in run_idf() has been changed to TRUE, which will always show EnergyPlus simulation process to the console.

• Fix the error of output_dir argument checking in rum_multi().

• Now an informative error message is given when there is no SQL output found when trying to read simulation output using $report_data(), $report_data_dict and tabular_data() in EplusJob class.

• run_idf() and run_multi() now does not call clean_wd() as this is automatically handled by EnergyPlus itself.

Bug fixes

• Fix errors when try to get units $field_name(), $field_unit() and $field_default() in IddObject class.

• Fix the error that $get_value() and $table() in IdfObject class did not return all field values even all was set to TRUE.

• Fix the error that $table() in IdfObject class did not return field units even unit was set to TRUE.

• Fix the error that $replace_value() in Idf class did not update object names.

• Fix the error when unit is set to TRUE in $get_data() in Epw class.

• Fix the error that $state_province in Epw class always returns NULL.

• Fix the error of missing expanded IDF files which occurred randomly in run_multi().

eplusr 0.8.3

New features

• A new method $possible_value() has been added into IdfObject class, which will return all possible values for selected fields, including auto-value (autosize or autocalculate), default, range, choices and references.

• New parameter dir has been added to install_eplus(), which makes it possible for keeping the downloaded EnergyPlus installation file.

• $dup_object() in Idf class now can duplicate one object multiple times.

Minor changes

• The names of returned list of $get_value() in IdfObject is "underscore" name, not lower name. This makes its behavior being consistent with $object() in Idf class.

• When wait is FALSE, $run() in EplusJob and ParametricJob will return itself instead of the time when simulation started.

• A clear message will be given when trying to run $kill() in ParametricJob, which inform the user that currently $kill() does not for parametric simulations.

• A warning will be given if no configuration data found in eplus_config().

• Now the names of returned list from $search_object() in Idf class will also be underscore-style object names, which makes its behavior being consistent with $object() and $object_in_class(). Also, if no results found, $search_object() now will return invisible NULL and give a message.

• $dup_object() will give an error if given new_name is the an existing object name.

Bug fixes

• Fix errors in $status(), $output_dir() and $locate_output() in ParametricJob class when which arg is not given (#12).

• Fix idf input version parsing in param_job (#13).

• Fix EnergyPlus downloading and installing errors on Linux and macOS (#14, #17).

• Fix run_idf() and run_multi() errors on Linux and macOS (#14).

• Fix missing name attribute in class NodeList (#16).

• Fix errors in use_eplus() when input is an EnergyPlus installation path (#18).

eplusr 0.8.2

New feature

• $get_value() in IdfObject class new has a new argument simplify. If TRUE, a character vector will be returned instead of a named list. Default is FALSE.

Minor changes

• The names of returned list of $get_value() in IdfObject is "underscore" name, not lower name. This makes its behavior being consistent with $object() in Idf class.

Bug fixes

• Fix warning messages of column type coercion from data.table in Idf and IdfObject.

• $set_value() in IdfObject and $set_object() in Idf now will delete empty fields with empty value. This fix the error when trying to reassign only some empty fields which have been deleted before.

eplusr 0.8.1

Major changes

• Add package logo.
• Add Epw, EplusJob and ParametricJob class and methods.
• Add IdfObject and IddObject class and methods.
• Refactor Idf and Idd class methods.

Reference manual