Go to the Tree View on the left-hand side of the screen and then expand the Heating Design Data folder. Now expand the relevant Heating Design Day - the number of Heating Design Days will be determined by how many you have added in the Building Simulator, prior to simulation. You will be able to see on the Tree View that there is a Zone Groups folder, a Zones folder, and a link to a page called 'Performance Summary'. This topic in the manual will describe the page that is shown on the right-hand side of the screen when you expand the Zones folder and then select one of the zones.
The 'Zone' details window will display the name and description of the zone, which the user will be able to edit. It will also display a table of surfaces for which results for the Heating Design Day can be displayed. The table has the following columns:
No.
This is the number that Tas Building Simulator has assigned to the zone surface.
Orientation
The orientation for all surfaces except ceilings and floors is displayed as an angle in degrees, indicating the azimuth of the surface with respect to true north.
Type
Type is used to specify the space to which the surface connects, and whether the building component (wall, ceiling, etc.) to which the surface belongs is transparent to solar radiation.
There are five categories of Type:
Exposed: denotes a component exposed to the external climate, such as a wall, window or a roof.
Ground: denotes a component in contact with the ground.
-> <Zone Name>: denotes a component which connects to another zone.
Null link: denotes a component connecting to a space which is not being explicitly modelled. The adjoining space is assumed to be at the same environmental condition as the zone being described. Null Links allow you to investigate the performance of part of a building, without modelling the building in its entirety. The thermal mass of Null Links is taken into account in the analysis.
Internal: denotes one side of a component which is contained entirely within the zone - i.e. a partition wall or floor. The mass of such partitions may have a significant effect on the thermal characteristics of the zone (for example reducing summer overheating) and they should therefore be included in the model. The two sides of a partition are represented by two Internal surfaces of the same area and the same building element (though with opposite orientations). If one surface is designated a floor, the other will be a ceiling, and vice versa.
Area
The area of the surface, defined as the average of internal and external
areas of the component.
Building Element
The component's construction type, as defined in the Building Elements table of the model's Tas Building Data file.
Left clicking on the column header will sort the table alphabetically by that parameter. Left clicking on the column header another time will reverse the order.
To manually change the width of a column, left click and hold the left mouse button down while the cursor is over the line that divides selected column header and the column header to the right of it, move the cursor to the left or right, and then release the mouse button.
To alter the width of the column to automatically accommodate all of the characters for the zone with the longest name, double left click on the line that divides the selected column header and the column to the right of it.
To assign a surface to an 'Output Specification', left click on the'+' by the 'Output Specification' folder to display all the 'Output Specification' profile icons. Left click on the row in the zone's surface table to highlight the surface you want to use then hold down the left mouse button, move the pointer to the 'Output Specification', and then release the mouse button.
If you want to assign all a zone's surfaces to an 'Output Selection', go to that 'Output Selection' details window. Left click on the '+' by the 'Zones' folder to display all the zones. Move the mouse over the appropriate 'Zone' icon, hold down the mouse button, move the pointer to the 'Output Selection' surfaces table and release the mouse button. The table will now populate with all the zone's outputted surfaces and the 'Output Selection' Zones table will now contain the zone that you dragged across.