Can't we just improve other tools?

I have been working in Building Simulation Tool space for nearly a decade now. During this time, I have tried to combine simulation tools and methods, and also to make simulation more accessible to people. For example, my MSc research focused on the integration of Radiance and EnergyPlus. It was then when I started developing Groundhog, which intended to put Radiance in everyone’s hands. While developing Groundhog I realized that Radiance could use some sort of wrapper to make it a bit friendlier by offering out-of-the-box optimizations and pre- and post-processing. This motivated me to develop Emp, a Radiance orchestrator. Both projects—Radiance and Emp—have already died for various reasons.

During my time developing building performance simulation tools I have learned about an enormous amount of undeniable virtues that currently available tools—e.g., EnergyPlus and Radiance—have: they have been extensively validated, they are open source, they are free (as in freedom), and so on. Unfortunately, I have also seen many drawbacks. For starters, these tools were not really meant to be embedded on other tools. Radiance confesses this quite clearly:

“These routines are designed to aid the programmer who wishes to call Radiance as a library. Unfortunately, the system was not originally intended to be run this way, and there are some awkward limitations to contend with…” (Radiance’s raycalls.c)

Also, these tools were developed decades ago. Radiance was developed before the gaming and animation industry invested millions in improving rendering techniques, and EnergyPlus tends to focus too much on building physics even if we now know that we need to pay more attention to people’s behaviour in buildings (because insulating an open door is pointless). Also, programming was different back then, with different source control systems and way less people who knew how to code.

SIMPLE attempts to fix these issues by being open-source from day zero, by using a modern programming language, by having an architeture designed for enabling collaboration. Don’t be mistaken, though, SIMPLE does not attempt to reinvent the wheel. The real wheel is the knowledge of physics and rendering and computer sciences behind currently existing Building Performance Simulation tools… what it proposes is to build a good-old wheel with new materials and methods, in a more modern factory, and that is designed to travel in modern roads.