Overview

This application allows you to visualise and edit annual hourly schedule data. This is basically just a list of one or more daily profiles together with information about which profile applies to each day of the year.

A daily profile contains 24 hourly values that describe the temporal operation of something - be that a piece of equipment, the occupancy of a space, how open an aperture is or how much energy something is using. For flexibility, these hourly values are usually stored as fractions or percentages as this allows the same profile to be applied to buildings or equipment of different sizes. In such cases the values are used as modifiers of whatever the maximum size, load or capacity is.

Getting Started

The app contains a simple schedule when it starts up. You can load another schedule by simply dragging and dropping it anywhere within the application window in the browser, or by clicking the Import schedule data button (). To reassign a different profile to any range of days, first select them by clicking/touching the pointer in the week/day grid and dragging over the range you need. You can add to or remove from the current selection set using either the Shift key or the three selection option button in the top toolbar. You can also use the SELECT DATE RANGE popup by clicking the calendar button () in the top-right.

To edit a profile, click on its small thumbnail in the profile list to display it in the profile editor. The data in the editor will change to reflect the new current profile and the colour of the ASSIGN button will update. Use this button to assign the current profile to the selected date range in the week/day grid.

Interesting Features

The following are some of this app's more interesting features:

• It provides a useful visual interface for overviewing annual hourly schedule data and assigning hourly profiles to specific days.
• It allows schedule data to be exported in a range of different formats including CSV, DIVA/DaySim occupancy schedules, EnergyPlus (IDF and epJSON) and OpenStudio (gbXML is on the way).
• Daily profiles can be dynamically re-ordered within the list by pressing the pointer on the profile you want to move and holding it down until its background turns light red, after which you can drag it to a new position.
• If you select a range of hourly profile nodes in the profile editor, you can apply a range of different easing functions to transition the points smoothly between the first and last selected values.
• Selected hourly profile nodes can also be incremented, scaled and even time-shifted using the controls above the profile editor.
• Double click/tap any hourly profile node to display a popup numeric editor allowing more detailed control over the entered value.
• Provides an EnergyPlus mode in which daily profiles are organised into weekly groups and can be applied to additional day types for dynamic switching using weather data or locale-specific holidays or work patterns.
• Able to toggle between linear and stepped hourly profile data in order to better understand and/or demonstrate the basic time relationships.
• Whilst date ranges can be interactively selected in the week/day grid, an additional popover is provided to allow for seasonal and monthly selection as well as more detailed control over the affected day types.

© Dr. Andrew J. Marsh, 2018.