Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations

Building energy simulation has been widely utilized to support the design decision-making process for new constructions and to establish baselines for energy retrofitting of existing buildings. However, the requirement for well-trained engineers to spend substantial time completing the work has some...

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Main Authors: Wei-Jen Chen, Min-Cheng Tu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-06-01
Series:Results in Engineering
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123025016457
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author Wei-Jen Chen
Min-Cheng Tu
author_facet Wei-Jen Chen
Min-Cheng Tu
author_sort Wei-Jen Chen
collection DOAJ
description Building energy simulation has been widely utilized to support the design decision-making process for new constructions and to establish baselines for energy retrofitting of existing buildings. However, the requirement for well-trained engineers to spend substantial time completing the work has somewhat hindered its development. This paper attempts to extract geometric data from existing 2D floor plan drawings and then proposes an algorithm to identify all faces enclosed by simple closed curves on the drawings. These faces are subsequently converted into the FloorspaceJS format files supported by the OpenStudio Application, which can be directly imported for further processing. The results indicate that the time complexity of this process, represented using Big O notation to describe the upper bound of algorithmic runtime in computational complexity analysis, is O(NM), where N represents the total number of vertices and M represents the total number of line segments in the relevant layer of the drawing. Given that N and M are typically within manageable limits, the algorithm is expected to complete its task in seconds. As a result, this approach is well-suited to accelerating building energy simulation, thereby saving engineers valuable time.
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spelling doaj-art-482d2d4dd5204b81ace81f7e15b09c0f2025-08-20T02:31:00ZengElsevierResults in Engineering2590-12302025-06-012610557510.1016/j.rineng.2025.105575Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulationsWei-Jen Chen0Min-Cheng Tu1Undergraduate Program of Vehicle and Energy Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City 106, Taiwan; Corresponding author.Department of Natural Sciences, College of Coastal Georgia, Brunswick, GA 31520, USABuilding energy simulation has been widely utilized to support the design decision-making process for new constructions and to establish baselines for energy retrofitting of existing buildings. However, the requirement for well-trained engineers to spend substantial time completing the work has somewhat hindered its development. This paper attempts to extract geometric data from existing 2D floor plan drawings and then proposes an algorithm to identify all faces enclosed by simple closed curves on the drawings. These faces are subsequently converted into the FloorspaceJS format files supported by the OpenStudio Application, which can be directly imported for further processing. The results indicate that the time complexity of this process, represented using Big O notation to describe the upper bound of algorithmic runtime in computational complexity analysis, is O(NM), where N represents the total number of vertices and M represents the total number of line segments in the relevant layer of the drawing. Given that N and M are typically within manageable limits, the algorithm is expected to complete its task in seconds. As a result, this approach is well-suited to accelerating building energy simulation, thereby saving engineers valuable time.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123025016457Building energy simulationAutomationCAD drawing analysis2D Space Generation
spellingShingle Wei-Jen Chen
Min-Cheng Tu
Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
Results in Engineering
Building energy simulation
Automation
CAD drawing analysis
2D Space Generation
title Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
title_full Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
title_fullStr Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
title_full_unstemmed Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
title_short Automated process for analyzing 2D CAD floor plan drawings and generating FloorspaceJS-compatible space objects for building energy simulations
title_sort automated process for analyzing 2d cad floor plan drawings and generating floorspacejs compatible space objects for building energy simulations
topic Building energy simulation
Automation
CAD drawing analysis
2D Space Generation
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123025016457
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