Hello! I'm not a specialist in this field but I've recently "stumbled" upon a book that might answer your question. The book is called "The Whole Building Handbook: How to Design Healthy, Efficient and Sustainable Buildings" and it's by Varis Bokalders and Maria Block. You can find it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Building-Handbook-Efficient-Sustainable/dp/1844075230 or if you need the pdf version, message me and I'll be glad to send it to you by e-mail.

Dear Sepideh,

When it comes to building design, I believe in our (Iranians) old design method by which I mean "Make it natural". The ultimate goal of a designer is to make the best use of natural energy, natural light, natural ventilation with the least material consumption. So why not to try to take advantage of what the nature offers us for free?

There are well over 100 simulation tools available.

https://www.buildingenergysoftwaretools.com/

As I do this professionally I can tell you for certain that no one tool will provide you with everything that you need on complex/unique projects. For simpler projects you might be able to do everything within 1 tool with some work arounds.

Some tools are better for passive design, some tools are better for specific components, some tools are better for complex HVAC, and so on.

For a net zero energy laboratory currently under construction we used the following tools:

-EnergyPlus for complex HVAC

-IES-VE for facade design

-LightStanza for daylighting/glare

-Helioscope for solar PV

-Phoenics for CFD of laboratory spaces

-several in house developed spreadsheet tools for climate, water, battery/grid management, and resilience analyses.

Ultimately everything was integrated into an EnergyPlus model for LEED and energy code compliance.

Hi Sepideh! I agree with the answers above. Depending on the project, I would also suggest Revit, especially if you're looking for a unique tool to work with.

It might take a lot of time to model the building with the specifications of the walls/windows/roof/etc, but once all the info is there you can upload it to the Autodesk cloud to generate an energy analysis. It will give you the performance of the current model and suggest many measures to both reduce energy consumption (improving the envelope, maybe by changing windows or adding insulation, adding shading, etc) and enhance the indoor quality.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2019/ENU/Revit-Analyze/files/GUID-7B4D4470-0152-43A7-8173-56EDE0D5027D-htm.html

Try to reach Bill Smith - CEO of Elite Software to get direction as to which is best and why regarding simulations. I believe Elite has exited the simulation piece of this market and currently support their HVAC Load calculation programs, and other major design trade software. Beyond this my only recommendation would be to try to validate results long sand where you can, rely on ASHRAE Recommendations, and look closely at CLTD and TMF based programs where you are on the line regarding results.

Building performance optimization in the design stages, or Building design optimization process faces a variety of challenges/obstacles such as the related problems of design variables optimization technique used, simulation tool, multi-objective design optimization, issues related to the integration of optimization technique and simulation tools. However, there is no specific tool or optimization technique to solve all these related problems. Genetic algorithm with EnergyPlus and Radiance tools usually use by building research community in the field of building energy-efficient design optimization. Please, read the attached papers.

There are several softwares reliable that you can use. You need to take care about the input data, the model calibration if there is an existing building reference and the results analysis. This paper is interesting to have a big picture of this topic if you are working with an existing building (Retrofit):

A review of methods to match building energy simulation models to measured data:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.05.007

I fear I’m going to disappoint. In my opinion, the challenge to develop an optimisation program for the design of buildings is the equivalent of the search for the Holy Grail - a misdirected search for something that probably doesn’t exist. An ‘optimum’ can only exist in the context of strictly determined parameters. In the real world those parameters are ever changing. The best a design team can strive for is that a building has resilience and can be adapted to embrace changing circumstances. Many years ago the RIBA recognised this when they.came up with the motto. ‘Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy’. What could be less optimal than ‘loose fit’?

TRNSYS (pronounced: 'tran-sis') is a software package that has been commercially available since 1975. The software package consisits of a graphical front-end (TRNSYS Simulation Studio) to intuitively create a simulation, an interface for the detailed TRNSYS multi-zone building (TRNBuild/Type56), a SketchUp plugin for creating the multi-zone building envelope (TRNSYS3d), and a tool for manually editing the TRNSYS input files and creating stand-alone TRNSYS-based applications (TRNEdit/TRNSED). TRNSYS takes a modular, "black box" component approach to developing and solving simulations: the outputs of one component are sent to the inputs of another component (transient successive subsitution). TRNSYS has been used extensively but is definitely not limited to simulate solar processes and other renewable energy, high performance buildings, and electric power generation.