Paper Conference

Proceedings of eSim 2004: 3th Conference of IBPSA-Canada

     

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EE4 SOFTWARE FOR MEETING CHANGING NEEDS AND NEW PROGRAMMES

Robert Calla, Maria Mottillo, Alex Ferguson

Abstract: EE4 has evolved into a family of software since its original development in the late 1990's. EE4 CODE, EE4 CBIP, EE4 Russia and EE4 MURB are all siblings that the CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) has developed to support varying needs and programmes. State of the art technology in software development and simulation tools has certainly changed since EE4's original development. After considering the new tools available for simulating buildings today, the availability of third-party supporting software, our improved understanding of the needs of EE4 users, and the drawbacks in its current design, we have prepared a wish list of changes for the next generation of EE4: making EE4 source code more modular so that functionality can be added or removed as plug and play components without affecting other parts of the program; making EE4 data structures more accessible to other third party software; pushing it further towards it being a cross-platform tool; re-evaluating the simulation engine and reevaluating its mandate as a compliance-checking tool. Such changes would be a major undertaking spanning several years.
Pages: 261 - 268
Paper:
esim2004_33