Requirements and dependencies

AixLib is a Modelica model library for building performance simulations. Therefore, in order to use AixLib, you will need a simulation environment supporting the modeling language Modelica. Currently, we are using the simulation environment Dymola and try to at least ensure, that AixLib opens in OpenModelica without errors. For the future, we plan to support other simulation environments as well.

If you need an introduction to Modelica, we recommend Michael Tiller's free online book Modelica by Example.

For working with AixLib and its repository, we assume you are familiar with using Git (see our Git Workflow) and that you have the necessary software installed on your system.

For developers, we recommend to install the Python packages BuildingsPy and ModelicaRes. We use BuildingsPy for running the regression and unit tests as well as for automating the merge of the library IBPSA into AixLib and automating the simulation of models with Python. ModelicaRes is useful for analyzing Modelica result files in Python.

When installing BuildingsPy and ModelicaRes on Windows, we recommend to clone their respective repositories and install the packages by typing pip install -e <path-to-your-cloned-repository> into your cmd prompt. This is because other AixLib developers will also work with the current master of these packages from the repositories instead of with current official release versions. Therefore, using pip install buildingspy or pip install modelicares may lead to you using different versions than other AixLib developers.