Copy weather file to project for increased portability of projects

[marcusfuchs]

As I understand the current code, it stores an absolute path to the weather file in the exported building model. We have the use case where we generate models on one machine, but simulate on another machine. Making sure to set the correct absolute path for the weather file over multiple machines has proven to be relatively cumbersome and error-prone in our experience.

Therefore I suggest the following alternative approach:

• Generate a folder Resources within the project export file structure
• Copy a weather file from the given path (or TEASER's default weather file location) to this Resources folder
• Use Modelica.Utilities.Files.loadResource("modelica://... to load the weather file from the relative project path

For our applications, this would be the preferred standard way of handling weather files in the TEASER exported models. If others agree, I can propose an implementation. An if others prefer the current way, maybe we could add the suggested approach as an option?

[MichaMans]

@marcusfuchs thanks for this issue! I like this enhancement. Maybe we should include the boundary condition tables like T_set in the Resource folder as well.

[marcusfuchs]

I started looking into this, during which I noticed the following:

The Project class documents its weather_file_path attribute as follows:

"""
weather_file_path : str
        Absolute path to weather file used for Modelica simulation. Default
        weather file can be find in inputdata/weatherdata.
"""

Yet, the Project.set_default() function seems to set the default from

self.weather_file_path = utilities.get_full_path(
            os.path.join(
                "data",
                "input",
                "inputdata",
                "weatherdata",
                "DEU_BW_Mannheim_107290_TRY2010_12_Jahr_BBSR.mos"))

to

self.weather_file_path = "modelica://AixLib/Resources/WeatherData/" \
                                 "TRY2010_12_Jahr_Modelica-Library.txt"

Even though I suspect from the TRY2010_12 in both filenames that the contents of the two files should be the same, I think it may be a bit risky to reference two different files here instead of one. As a result of this, the tests in TEASER/tests/test_data.py are executed with the second reference via the MODELICAPATH.

To avoid parsing the MODELICAPATH in TEASER to copy files, I would propose the following implementation:

• Project.weather_file_path accepts both modelica://...-paths and absolute paths
• If an absolute path is given, we copy the file to the Resources folder, and reference the file in the model via modelica://...
• Else the original modelica://...-path is used directly in the model without copying

Let me know if you have ideas for a better implementation!

And I would suggest to consider changing the set_default method to not switch to a different weather file, maybe in a separate issue?

[MichaMans]

The currently shipped weather file leads to error in the simulation. I think we should change it to a working one

[MartinRaetz]

I would like to pick up this topic.

Is there any information about the reason, why the last implementation did not work?

Was the shipped file faulty? Was the implementation faulty?

[marcusfuchs]

Sorry, I have no further information after my last post above.

[MartinRaetz]

solved in: #664