2.7 BoundaryCondition Schemas
Boundary conditions are assigned to either Faces, Apertures or Doors and they denote what is on the other side of the object from the Room interior. Currently, four types of boundary conditions are supported in the schema:
OutdoorsSurfaceGroundAdiabatic
The Outdoors boundary condition represents an object that is exposed to the exterior. Optional keys can be used to set an objects's exposure to sun, wind, and to override the auto-calculated view factor to the ground.
The Surface boundary condition represents an object that is on the interior of a building, with another Room on the other side. For this reason, Surface boundary conditions always require an array of "boundary_condition_objects" in order to be valid.
The "boundary_condition_objects" key is for an array of up to 3 object names that are adjacent to the object hosting the boundary condition. The first object in this array is always the one that is immediately adjacent and is of the same object type (Face, Aperture, Door). When a Surface boundary condition is applied to a Face, the second object in the array will be the parent Room of the adjacent object. When the Surface boundary condition is applied to a sub-face (Door or Aperture), the second object will be the parent Face of the adjacent sub-face and the third object will be the parent Room of the adjacent Face.
While hosting arrays of up to 3 names can require additional work, it eases the look-up of adjacent objects within the schema. For example, there is no need to loop through all faces in a model in order to find an adjacent Face. One only needs to find the adjacent Room and then search there for the adjacent Face.
The Ground boundary condition represents an object that is in contact with soil such as a basement wall or foundation floor. It's schema is simple and identified only by a "type" key.
The Adiabatic boundary condition represents an object across which there is no heat flow. It can be used to represent interior Faces when the adjacent surface is not known or is not within a Model. The lack of heat flow has no meaning for Radiance simulations but Faces with an Adiabatic boundary condition will be assigned interior radiance materials by default instead of exterior ones. It's schema is simple and identified only by a "type" key.
