[esp-r] a strategy for reordering zones in ESP-r

[Jon Hand (clcv10)]

Those of you who have ever painted yourself into a corner and
decided that you need to re-order the zones in an ESP-r model
might consider the following strategy that was worked out
by Aizaz Samuel.

Before applying the strategy back up your model (those running ESP-r
on a Linux / Sun / Mac or on a Windows box under Cygwin can
use the 'archive' facility in the top level menu of the project manager
to create a 'tar' format archive file of all the files referenced in the
model).

Next generate a QA report for the model and print it out so that
you can have a reference of the assumptions and relationships
within the model.

If you have edited the model configuration file to impose a different
ordering of zones then you can apply the following strategy...

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The following information may be useful in other instances where zones
need to be reordered. I did all the following steps in the same order

1. Topology needs to be rebuilt (run topology tool)
2. Mapping of air flow node - thermal zone needs to be updated (I
     changed the node ordering in cfg file and that seems to work fine)
3. Loops for thermal and air flow control need to be updated.
4. If present view factor files *.vwf need to be edited manually and old
     zone numbers need to be replaced by new ones
5. Shading files if present need to be modified (use the global option
     to rerun shading analysis for all zones)
6. Generate a new QA report for the model and check it against the
     original report to see if you have any outstanding issues.

-ESRU