Working with Systems

In the Sustainable Building Modeller, a system is a collection of logic, properties, and rules that work together to perform specialized simulations or operations on building models. Systems can represent physical phenomena, data flows, behavioral rules, or any structured process within a building or its environment.

What Are Systems?

Systems define how certain elements of the model interact with each other, evolve over time, or respond to inputs. They operate independently from the geometric model and serve as the analytical or functional layer of the application. Each system has its own configuration and targets specific types of elements or behaviors — for example, energy flow, ventilation, control rules, or signal transmission.

Structure and Behavior

Each system consists of the following components:

• System Root: A top-level data object that organizes and stores all related information for a system, including settings, elements, and results.
• System Elements: Special data objects that are linked to model elements or standalone. These may include rules, sources, sensors, zones, or equipment — depending on the system's design.
• Simulation Rules and Parameters: Configurable rules that govern how the system behaves. These can be numerical settings, conditional logic, or physical laws.
• Computation and Results: Most systems include a calculation step. When invoked, the software performs analysis based on system data and generates structured results.

Creating and Editing Systems

Systems are automatically added to projects when a new project is created, and cannot be manually added or removed by the user. Each system appears in the System Collection folder within the solution tree and is always present for relevant operations.

Users can interact with systems by:

• Viewing and managing system elements directly in the model view.
• Editing system-specific properties using the property panel.
• Running calculations or simulations tailored to each system type.
• Reviewing and exporting simulation results.

Systems are modular. This makes them ideal for layered modeling, where you can simulate and refine individual behaviors without needing to recompute the entire model.

Good Practices

To ensure accurate and consistent simulations, consider the following best practices:

• Always verify the structure of the model before running system simulations.
• Use tags and groupings to organize system elements clearly.
• Save versions or snapshots of the model before running complex calculations.
• Validate results by comparing them to expected physical or design behaviors.

Systems make the Sustainable Building Modeller a powerful tool not only for creating geometry, but also for analyzing and testing real-world building performance. By combining geometry with rules and simulation data, systems let you move from drawings to decisions.