Installation

A. Steps to install and get the OpenStudio PRM running for scripting with OpenStudio API

There are 4 parts to this section.

  1. Download Ruby
  2. Download OpenStudio
  3. Connect Ruby with OpenStudio
  4. Download OpenStudio Standard
1. Download Ruby

Ruby 2.7. Compatible version is 2.7.2 and it can be downloaded at: https://cache.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/2.7/ruby-2.7.2.tar.gz

  • You can verify the ruby installation with the following command in the command line: 
    C:\Users\sample_user>ruby -v
ruby 2.7.2p137 (2020-10-01 revision 5445e04352) [x64-mingw32]
2. Download OpenStudio

OpenStudio 3.7. The latest stable 3.7 version is 3.7.0 and it can be downloaded at: https://github.com/NREL/OpenStudio/releases/tag/v3.7.0 More recent version of OpenStudio can be found in the OpenStudio release link: https://github.com/NREL/OpenStudio/releases. The PRM is tested against v3.7 and lower.

3. Connect Ruby to OpenStudio

Once you have both Ruby and OpenStudio installed, the next thing is to connect OpenStudio with Ruby.

  • Step 1: Navigate to ruby installation directory and find the site_ruby folder. In Windows, it should be a directory like this:

     C:\Ruby27-x64\lib\ruby\site_ruby

  • Step 2: Create a new ruby file called openstudio.rb under the site_ruby folder. Folder Image

  • Step 3: Open the openstudio.rb file and add one line:

    require "C:/[Openstudio directory]/Ruby/openstudio.rb"

  • The directory shall point to the openstudio.rb file under the OpenStudio installation folder. Revise the path after require based on your actual installation directory.

  • You can verify the setting with the following command in the command line.

    C:\Users\sample_user> irb
irb(main):001:0> require "openstudio"
=> true

    Return true verifies a success on your local setup.

4. Download OpenStudio Standards
  • Install the gem OpenStudio Standards. Open command prompt and type the following. 
    gem install openstudio-standards
Now we can create a new ruby project using the OpenStudio Standard package.

The OpenStudio Standard package is hosted on Github as an open-source project. The latest PRM method development is in the Appendix_G branch. You can either clone the branch or download it as a zip package. To run the package, import the path to your ruby script as the example shown below.

require_relative 'C:\\Users\\Documents\\OSSTD_Repo\\lib\\openstudio-stadnards.rb'