Building structure & terms
Terms of the VICUS Buildings data model: the hierarchy of building, storey, room, surface and sub-surface, as well as the navigation tree, object IDs and renaming
Overview
The data model of VICUS Buildings is strictly hierarchical. Each object belongs to exactly one level of the hierarchy and has a project-wide unique ID. The navigation tree to the left of the 3D scene reflects this hierarchy and is at the same time the central tool for selection, visibility and renaming.
The hierarchy: Building → Storey → Room → Surface → Sub-surface
| Level | Term (UI) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Building | Top level; a project can contain several buildings |
| 2 | Storey (building level) | Organizational level below the building, with an elevation above grade and a storey height (default 2.7 m); rooms are assigned to storeys |
| 3 | Room | Thermal zone of the simulation; carries floor area [m²] and volume [m³] as parameters, as well as the assignment to the usage profile |
| 4 | Surface | Planar polygon (wall, floor, ceiling, roof surface) as part of a room; linked via component instances to constructions and boundary conditions |
| 5 | Sub-surface | Window, glass door or opaque sub-surface (door) within a surface; receives a window component |
| 5 | Hole | Opening in a surface with no thermal effect of its own (e.g. a cut-out); a hole can in turn contain a standalone child surface, see Surfaces & holes |
Besides the building hierarchy, a project contains further object groups that appear as their own root nodes in the navigation tree:
- Shading objects — geometry without a thermal zone that only affects shading, see Shading geometry
- Drawings / DXFs — imported DXF and GIS drawings as an underlay, see DXF import
- Images — imported PDF/image underlays, see GIS & PDF/image import
- OpenStreetMap — with the child nodes Map, OSM base layer, OSM roads & rails and OSM buildings, see OSM import
- Networks — relevant only in the Heat-Network workspace
Navigation tree
The navigation tree shows three controls per row for each object:
- Light-bulb icon — toggles the object’s visibility in the 3D scene. The click acts on the object and all child objects; with the Shift key held, only on the object itself.
- Selection checkbox — the object’s selection state (synchronized with the selection in the scene); here too: click including child objects, Shift+click only the object itself.
- Object name — editable by inline editing (see below).
Category nodes (e.g. Building, Shading objects) have neither a light bulb nor a selection checkbox. Surfaces with invalid polygon geometry are shown in red and carry a tooltip such as Invalid polygon/hole geometry; such surfaces can be corrected with the functions under Align & repair. The collapse state of the tree is preserved across project changes.
The toolbar above the tree (Remove, Show/Hide, Selection) is described in Selection & Visibility.
Showing object IDs
Every object (building, storey, room, surface, sub-surface, shading object) has a unique numeric ID assigned when it is created. The menu item View > Show IDs in navigation tree displays the IDs in italics to the right of the object name.
The IDs are especially important for evaluating results: output definitions and result files of the simulation reference zones and constructions via their IDs, see Defining outputs. Smart Selection can also filter by IDs.
Renaming objects
Object names are edited directly in the navigation tree (double-click on the name). The following applies:
- The new name is automatically made unique if necessary (by appending a numeric suffix), so that no two sibling objects carry the same name.
- An empty name is discarded; the previous name is kept.
- Renaming is an undoable action (Object renamed to ”…”).
- If the ID display is active, the ID part
[ID]is automatically removed when the name is saved.
Rooms without a name appear in the tree as unnamed; sub-surfaces and holes without a name receive automatically generated names (Sub-surface 1, Hole 1, …).
Good to know:
Assign systematic room and surface names (e.g. “GF.01 Office North”) before defining outputs: in the result files and in PostProc, objects appear with name and ID — meaningful names save you from having to trace back via the ID display of the navigation tree later.
Managing the structure
Creating and reorganizing buildings, storeys and rooms (including assigning rooms to storeys) is done in the Floor management in Structure mode, see Floor management. The floor area and volume of rooms are shown, calculated from geometry and repaired under Room properties. Rooms can additionally be grouped into structural units independently of the building hierarchy.