Air Walls divide rooms without a physical barrier. Sometimes referred to as room or space separation lines, Air Walls provide flexibility to define rooms without walls. Typical use cases include:
Separating circulation from the open office desk area
Separating informal seating areas from circulation
Dividing a reception desk from an open lobby
How to draw Air Walls?
Air Walls can be selected from the Building Elements. Simply pick from the drop-down next to Walls. Once active you can draw Air Walls in the same as Walls. Be sure to utilize snaps to help keep everything square. Walls (Interior or Exterior) can be changed into Air Walls by selecting from the wall type drop-down in the properties panel.
Important Notes:
Air Walls cannot host Windows, Doors, or Openings. When an Exterior or Interior Wall is changed to an Air Wall, any existing doors, windows, etc. will be removed.
Air Walls should not be used as a part of the exterior envelope. The heat loss from that will result in an EnergyPlus simulation error. Simply convert that air wall to an exterior wall to resolve the error.
How does an Air Wall impact analysis?
Air Walls are not considered in the 3D Analysis (they're not really there after all). This means that daylight and views will pass through them. Air Walls do denote rooms, which can help when creating the Occupied vs Unoccupied LEED Report.
Air Walls also will not impact the Baseline Energy model. Again, they can be used to define detail rooms which can feed into the area-weight average definitions used for lighting, appliance, and occupants
For load calculations, the Air Walls are considered Adiabatic (no heat transfer) and do not block solar gain. Again the primary use of an Air Wall is to separate rooms that require a different template.
Air Wall Properties
Air walls have fewer properties than interior and exterior walls. For example, properties such as thickness and assembly are not available for an Air Wall because there is no physical aspect for these to apply to. Air Walls do have a length and height that can be adjusted, along with a name property for identification.
FAQ:
You can also use this property to divide a single large room into multiple rooms.