re are major changes and enhancements.
HONEYBEE
More Flexible Workflow - Many small modifications were made to support a more flexible workflow, such as the ability to separate a zone created with masses2Zones into editable HBSrfs that can be recombined. For the energy components, it is now possible to plug custom constructions directly into the components that set the zone constructions without writing them first into the library. For the daylighting components it is now possible to change all of the materials of specific surface types at once.
Support for Complex Geometry - Many small bugs for complex geometry have been fixed including the ability to import energy results correctly for curved NURBS surfaces as well as unconventional window configurations. Also, the intersectMasses component now almost always succeeds in splitting all of the surfaces of adjacent zones, no matter how complex the intersection is.
Automatic Download Issues Fixed - Many users who faced issues with not having “gendaymtx.exe” or who had trouble syncing with our github know that we faced an issue with automatic background downloads.
Air Walls - Honeybee EnergyPlus models now officially support air walls (or virtual partitions) in a basic implementation. Now, any time that you use the air wall construction or set a surface type to “air wall,” the air between adjacent zones will be automatically mixed. At present, this mixing is just a constant flow based on the surface area between zones connected by air walls multiplied by an adjustable “flow factor.” It is important to stress that this basic air mixing is not with the EnergyPlus Airflow Network, although the groundwork laid in this release will eventually allow for the implementation of the Airflow Network in future releases. As such, this present air mixing is only suitable for multi-zone conditions where there is not significant buoyancy-driven flow between zones.
Natural Ventilation - To go along with the new potential introduced by air walls, there has been a basic implementation of EnergyPlus’s natural ventilation objects in a new component called “Set EP Airflow”. The current setup allows for three possible types of natural ventilation: 1) natural ventilation through windows (with auto-calculated flow based on window area, outdoor wind speed/direction, and stack effects), 2) custom wind and stack objects that can be used to model things such as chimneys off of single zones, and 3) constant, fan-driven natural ventilation.
Additional Thermal Mass - The capability to add additional thermal mass to zones has been added. This is useful for factoring in the mass of indoor furniture or heavy interior objects such as chimneys.
New Utility Components - Abraham has added a couple of useful components to help calculate lighting loads based on bulb types and target lighting levels as well as a converter from ACH to the m3/s-m2 that the other HB components accept. Along this vein, there is also a component for adding in the resistance of Air Films to HB constructions.
Improved and Editable Ideal Air Loads System - The EnergyPlus Ideal Air System now goes through an automatic sizing period at the start of the simulation based on the extreme weeks of the weather file. Furthermore, the ability to adjust many of the parameters of the ideal air loads system have been added with a new “Set Ideal Air Loads Parameters” component. The component allows you to add in heat recovery, air side economizers and demand-controlled ventilation.
OpenStudio Export Update - The OpenStudio workflow is still largely under development but this release includes a version with a working VAV and PTHP system template for those curious with experimenting. Note that not all of the new features available for the basic “Run Energy Simulation” component are available for the OpenStudio component (such as air walls, natural ventilation, or additional thermal mass).
Microclimate/Indoor Comfort Maps - Blossoming from initial experiments with the radiant temperature map, a workflow for looking into sub-zone microclimate and indoor comfort has been initiated. All components for this are presently under the Honeybee WIP tab but, over the next month, they will be completing their development phase and moving into the rest of the tabs. If you are interested in testing when they are ready, please let Chris know. For a teaser video of the intended capabilities, see this video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNylb42FPIc&list=UUc6HWbF4UtdKdjbZ2tvwiCQ)
LADYBUG
Monthly Bar Chart - After much demand from multiple parties, a new component to create monthly bar and line charts has been added. The component is particularly useful for plotting the outputs of the “Average Data” component like monthly EPW data or averaged monthly-per hour data. It also supports daily data and any type of Energy simulation results.
Wind Profile - To go along with the new capabilities of natural ventilation in Honeybee, Ladybug now has a fully fleshed-out Wind Profile component that allows you to visualize how wind speed changes with height in relation to your building geometry. The component is geared to understanding the conditions of prevailing wind and will be useful in the future for setting up CFD models. Credit goes to Djordje Spasic for adding in all of the new capabilities. In a similar vein, the appearance of the wind rose has also been improved thanks to suggestions from Alejandra Menchaca.
Faster Solar Adjusted Temperature - Thanks to the SolarCal method from the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/89m1h2dg), the solar adjusted temperature component now includes an option for a much faster calculation that produces results that are very close to those originally obtained with the genCumSky component. Instead of using the cumulative sky, the component can now accept the direct and diffuse radiation from the ImportEPW component. Over a whole year, this essentially takes a calculation that used to be a half-hour and shrinks it down to 10 seconds. Thanks again to those at UC Berkeley for keeping their work open source!
Instructions - Last but not the least, [It took me almost two years to understand this but finally] we have a text file that describes the installation step by step and is way easier to modify than a video. You can find it in the zip file. Credit goes to Chris!
We also want to welcome Anton, Patrick and Sandeep to the team. Anton has kicked off his development by working on a component to import and visualize epw ground temperature data and he will be continuing to develop components to bring in reliable precipitation data to Ladybug. With this basis, he will continue to implement Honeybee components for ground heat storage, earth tubes, rain collection and hot water systems. Patrick and Sandeep are working on integration of Honeybee to Energy Performance Calculator.
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.
Enjoy!…
les automatically at the right angle to form the cap of an icosahedron.
To complete the full icosahedron, we consider just the six points we already know, the five pentagon vertices and the raised pyramid tip and reorient one of the vertices using three-point transformation so it obtains the exact same relationship between vertices only one more stage beyond our little cap pyramid, and we do a five-fold polar array:
I used a password-protected cluster I ran into one the forum somewhere to reproduce Rhino's 3-point orient command:
A final 3-point orientation transforms in space the original pyramid tip down to the bottom:
Now we can create a convex hull which gives an icosahedron mesh:
So that's how you build an icosahedron in Rhino from scratch, only using rather long winded Grasshopper.
Now we use the Weaverbird plug-in to subdivide the faces and then project the vertices out onto a sphere via finding the closest points to a sphere and then recreating a convex hull to make a geodesic dome mesh:
Subdividing two times works fine but 3 times blows up convex hull, so I'll just have due with the the subdivision step and leave out projecting back to a sphere, since the algorithm already gives a nice spherical result that you can see inside this disaster:
Now you know what a standard geodescic dome is, just an icosahedron with faces divided into smaller triangles, projected out to a sphere.
Actually, the mere subdivision is just a bit blobby instead of a sphere, damn it, so I'll have to topologically recreate the mesh after projecting the points indeed back onto our sphere.
Using a subdivision plug-in may be slightly throwing the perfect result off, so manually creating subdivision points on each mesh face may be in order, doing them flat against each icosahedron face:
You can also start with the two other triangulated Platonic solids but those give less regular triangles:
…
a problem with SSL. Any Ideas? I am using the following code:
import json,httplib connection = httplib.HTTPSConnection('api.parse.com', 443) connection.connect() connection.request('GET', '/1/classes/MY-CLASS', '', { "X-Parse-Application-Id": "MY-APP-ID", "X-Parse-REST-API-Key": "MY-REST-API-KEY" }) result = json.loads(connection.getresponse().read()) print result
I Get the Following Messages:
Runtime error (IOException): Authentication failed because the remote party has closed the transport stream. Traceback: line 280, in do_handshake, "C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\Plug-ins\IronPython\Lib\ssl.py" line 120, in __init__, "C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\Plug-ins\IronPython\Lib\ssl.py" line 336, in wrap_socket, "C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\Plug-ins\IronPython\Lib\ssl.py" line 1156, in connect, "C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\Plug-ins\IronPython\Lib\httplib.py" line 3, in script Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! -Zach…
ch has a vertex in each of the vertices of the polyline. But, when I try to create the mesh using the Mesh Brep component, I get a simplified mesh, where the extra vertices in the edges of the polyline have disappeared. I think it is easier to understand what I am trying to say with the following screenshots:
Polyline:
Mesh created with the rhino command:
Mesh created using grasshopper:
The last mesh has less faces, as the Mesh Brep component gets rid of the extra vertices that define the polyline.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Diego…
imeBinder.CSharpArgumentInfo.Create'
Is it possible to solve this issue?
using System;
using IronPython.Hosting;
using IronPython.Runtime;
using Microsoft.Scripting;
using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
using Microsoft.CSharp;
namespace Bob.Meshes {
public class pythonFromCShapr {
ScriptEngine engine = Python.CreateEngine();
public pythonFromCShapr() {
}
public void something() {
dynamic scope = engine.CreateScope();
scope.Add = new Func<int, int, int>((x, y) => x + y);
Console.WriteLine( scope.Add(2, 3));
}
}
}…
This blog post is a rough approximation of the lecture I gave at the AAG10 conference in Vienna on September 21st 2010. Naturally it will be quite a different experience as the medium is quite…
Added by David Rutten at 3:27pm on September 24, 2010
le and grasshopper timer to simplify simulation control. Double click the main Kangaroo component to open this remote. There are buttons for Stop(reset), Play, Pause, and Step (moves the simulation forward one iteration).
Line-line force - allows interaction between line segments - they are treated as rigid cylinders. As with springs, there are settings for offset and rest distance, so this can be used to simulate colliding rods, and also for keeping cylinders tangent to one another (can be used for reciprocal structures).
Gear simulator - collision between curves in a plane, can be used for various mechanical simulations - cams, gears, rack and pinions etc.
Developablize force - adjusts vertices of a mesh locally, to make angles around each interior vertex sum to 2*Pi, so the mesh can be unfolded to a flat sheet without stretching.
Volume dependent pressure force - allows you to set a rest volume for a mesh instead of just a fixed pressure. When combined with Laplacian smoothing for area minimization, this can be used to optimize for CMC (constant-mean-curvature) surfaces. It will also work on open meshes.
Translation lock - maintains a fixed relationship between a pair of points. This can be used to enforce periodic boundary conditions for TPMS.
Equalize angles force - given a set of angles (defined by 3 points each), this tries to adjust them all to become equal.
Mirror symmetry force - can be used to minimize curvature variation, and optimize for higher order curve continuity. It can also be used for simulating torsional resistance in curved rods.
True minimal surface relaxation - Laplacian smoothing force now includes an option for cotangent weighting, which optimizes for zero mean curvature, unlike spring based methods, or uniform weighted Laplacian smoothing which only roughly approximate this.
Fast sphere collide - allows much faster collision detection between large numbers of spheres. By placing these spheres at the vertices, this can also be used for collision between meshes.
Force-density element - an experimental one, more on this later
Projected-force - adjusts its strength so the component of the force in a given direction stays constant.
New mesh tools:
WarpWeft - sorts the edges of a quad mesh into warp and weft directions. This can be used to assign them different stiffness in fabric form-finding.
Checkerboard - sort the faces of a mesh into 2 lists so that 2 faces of the same colour are never adjacent.
MeshDirection - sorts the vertices of a quad mesh to give it a sort of u-v directionality
Refine Strips - subdivision in one direction only - can be used to generate developable strips
Stripper - separates out the strips of quads from a larger mesh
Unroller - unfolds a quad strip to flat without stretching
MeshMap - maps points from one mesh to another (can be used together with circle-packing to generate conformal mappings)
Reciprocal structure - generates starting geometry for a reciprocal structure from any input mesh (using the Plankton mesh library *Note* If you already have the Plankton components installed, you will need to update to version 0.3.0, which is available from here)
ReMesher - adjusts the connectivity of a mesh by flipping, splitting and collapsing edges to make all edge lengths closer to a target value
Diagonalize - creates a new face for every edge of the original mesh. Can be used on quad meshes to easily convert to a diagrid.
Refine - simple non-smoothing subdivision, splitting quads into 4 quads, and triangles into 4 triangles
QuadDivide - subdivide quads by any number squared, not just powers of 4
Corners - finds the corner vertices of a quad mesh
ByParent - simple quad subdivision, keeping the output grouped by parent face.
User objects:
The download comes with an increased collection of user objects to simplify setting up common simulation types - Including a simple to use origami simulator, a reciprocal structure generator, and a tool to generate compact circle packings from a CP mesh.
General:
Geometry input now accepts polylines and straight curves.
Hinges can now be fold completely flat in both directions.
Various other minor bug fixes and speed improvements (including much faster removeDuplicatePoints/Lines components)
*****
I've not yet updated all the documentation and example files to reflect this new version, but over time I will keep posting here with new demos and explanation of all these new features. I'll try and add a few new examples each week. Vote in the comments below if there is a feature mentioned above that you're particularly keen to hear more about soon.
No doubt there are still some bugs to be discovered. If something isn't working the way you expect or want it to, please post in this forum (ideally with a description or sketch of what you think should be happening, and a clear description of what happens instead and any error messages).
There are also some more new features that weren't quite ready to make it into this release, but are on the way shortly...
Kangaroo remains completely free, for personal, academic, and commercial use. I'm always interested to hear about projects done using it, and suggestions for improvements or additions.
Daniel
…
n common tasks like updating GH definitions, viewing images on the GH canvass, and augmenting existing study-types. Most of the improvements to Honeybee have been in the making for a while and are just getting into the spotlight with this release. Notably, a number of improvements have been made to support large-scale full building energy models, including fixes to memory issues with large models, better components for splitting building masses into zones, and the ability to store HBZones in external files. Additionally, the THERM workflows have gotten a boost and these simulations can now be run directly from the Grasshopper canvass.
As always you can download the new release from Food4Rhino. Make sure to remove the older version of Ladybug and Honeybee before you do so and update your scripts. So, without further adieu, here is the list of the new capabilities added with this release:
LADYBUG
Better Method for Updating Old Grasshopper Files - As many of you have come to realize, Ladybug + Honeybee is updated on a fairly regular basis, with a stable release roughly every 6 months and a github version that never ceases to improve itself on a weekly basis. For this reason, we realize that updating old Grasshopper definitions to use recent components is a challenge for many of us. While we’ve had some methods for this in the past, there were always hiccups, particularly when it came to components that had new inputs/outputs since the previous version. Accordingly, Mostapha has added a new “Ladybug_Update File” component that will automatically update any Grasshopper Definition to be synchronized with the version of Ladybug+Honeybee that is currently in your toolbar (aka. the components in your userobjects folder). If there is a component that has new inputs/outputs since the time you built the definition, it will be automatically circled in red in your GH definition and a newer version of the component will be automatically added right next to this component:
While you still have to do some manual connecting of inputs to the newer component in this case, it should be much faster than our older methods and will hopefully help your old definitions survive long into the future!
EPWmap Now includes OneBuilding Files - Mostapha has added a number of new features to the EPWmap web interface that the “Download Ladybug” component connects to. Among the improvements are a color wheel that quickly shows you how hot, cold, and comfortable a given climate is and, perhaps more importantly, there is now support for EPW files sourced from OneBuilding. With the addition of many more weather files, you should now be able to use Ladybug with ease for more locations across the planet. We should also note that the “Open EPW and STAT” component that downloads/unzips files from a URL now supports OneBuilding URLs.
New Image Viewer Component - Mingbo Peng has graced Ladybug with a fantastic new “Image Viewer” component that takes a given image file on one’s machine and displays it on the Grasshopper canvas. It also enables one to pull color data off of the image with ease by simply clicking on the pixel of the image one is interested in. This new component is useful for a wide variety of cases, including the viewing of screenshots after they have been taken with the “Ladybug_Capture View” or “Ladybug_Render View” components. However, many of you will likely recognize it as most immediately useful in workflows involving image-based Honeybee Daylight (Radiance) simulations. This is particularly true as Migbo has built-in the capability to read many image file types, including PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and the High Dynamic Range (.HDR) image files that Radiance Outputs:
The following video gives a quick overview of the Image Viewer’s capabilities:
The new component can be found under the Ladybug_Extra tab and I think I speak for us all in saying thank you Mingbo for this great component!
New Sun Shades Calculator Released Under WIP - After over a year of software development and nearly a career's worth of geometric math development, a joint effort between Abraham Yezioro and Antonello Di Nunzio has produced a new sun shade design component that can be described as nothing short of “magical.” Based on a similar principle to the current “Ladybug_Shading Designer,” the new component takes an input of sun vectors and produces shade geometries that can block the vectors. However, in comparison to the shading designer, the range of shade options that are available in this new component is truly staggering, ranging from classic overhangs, louvers and fins to pergolas and custom shade surfaces. Perhaps more importantly, the calculation methods used by this new component are faster and more reliable. It can currently can be found under the WIP section of Ladybug and it will continue to evolve in new versions of Ladybug.
Renewable Component Now Support Sandia and CEC Photovoltaics Modules - Polishing off his many contributions to the “Renewables” section of Ladybug, Djordje Spasic has added support for a couple more ways of defining Photovoltaic modules for renewables estimation. Specifically, the Ladybug WIP section now includes components to import modules defined with the California Energy Commission (CEC) and Sandia Labs.
HONEYBEE
Support for OpenStudio 2.x - A few months ago, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) released a stable version of OpenStudio version 2, which included a number of improvements in stability and available features. This stable release of Honeybee is built to work with the new version of OpenStudio and, in the coming months, Honeybee will be adding a few more capabilities to its OpenStudio workflows to support v2.x’s new capabilities. Most notable among these will be support for OpenStudio measures. Measures are short scripts written in Ruby using OpenStudio’s SDK to quickly edit and change OpenStudio models. They are fundamental to visions of OpenStudio as a flexible energy modeling interface and to Honeybee’s goals of being a collaborative interface between the architectural and engineering industries. Stay tuned for the next release for many of these new capabilities!
Critical Memory Issue Fixed for Large Energy Models - A number of you wonderful members of our community have been aware of computer memory issues with large Honeybee models for some time (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4). Namely, a model that is larger than 50 zones could quickly eat up 16 GBs of memory and change Honeybee from a fast-flying insect to something more reminiscent of a snail. We are happy to say that, after a much longer time than it should have taken us, we finally identified and fixed the issue. In this version of Honeybee, such large models can now be created using less than 2% of the memory and time previously. Thanks to all of you who made us aware of this and hopefully you will now reap the rewards of your struggle.
Split Building Mass Component Getting a Makeover - Many of you veteran Ladybug users will recognize Saeran Vasathakumar as one of the original contributors of Ladybug who added components for solar fans and envelopes years ago. Now he’s back with new components to split a building mass into zones that are truly revolutionary in their speed and methodology. Saeran has divided the new capabilities into two components (one for floor-by-floor subdivision and another for core-perimeter subdivision) and they both can be found under the WIP section of this release. In this WIP version, core-perimeter thermal zones can only be generated for all convex and very simple concave geometries. Most concave geometries and geometries with holes (or courtyards) in them will fail. However it can handle even very complex convex geometries with speed and ease. You can expect the component to start accommodating concave/courtyard geometries very soon.
Load / Dump HB Objects to File - Keeping in line with the support of large, full building energy models, this release includes full support for two components that can dump and load any HBObjects to a standalone file. All information about HBzones can go into this file including custom constructions, schedules, loads, natural ventilation, shading devices, etc. You can then send the resulting .HB file to someone else and they can load up the same exact zones in another definition. This also makes it possible to have one Grasshopper file for generating the zones and running the simulation and another GH definition to import results and color zones/surfaces with those results, make energy balance graphics, etc.
Write ViewFactorInfo to File - After many of you asked for it, the _viewFactorInfo that is output from the “Honeybee_View Factor” component can now be written out to an external file using the same Load / Dump HB Objects components cited above. For those of you who have worked with the comfort map workflows, you probably already know that calculating these view factors is one of the most time consuming portions of building a microclimate map. Having to re-run this calculation each time you want to open up the Grasshopper script is a nuisance and, thanks to this new capability, you should only have to run it once and then store your results in an external .HB file.
Transform Honeybee Components Modified for Large Model Creation - Many large buildings today are made up of copies of the same rooms repeated over and over again across multiple floors, or along a street, etc. Accordingly, one can imagine that the fastest way to create a full building energy model of such buildings is to simply move and copy the same zones several times. This is what a new set of edits to the Honeybee Transform components is aimed at supporting by allowing one to build a custom set of zones, translate them several times with a Honeybee_Transform component, then solve adjacencies on all zones to make a complete energy model.
Central Plants Available on HVAC Systems - While Honeybee has historically supported the assigning of separate HVAC systems to different groups of zones, each HVAC was always an entirely new system from the ground up. So a building with separate VAV systems for each floor would be modeled with a different chiller and boiler for each floor. While this can be the case sometimes, it is more common to have only one chiller and boiler per building but separate air systems for each floor. The new ‘centralPlant_’ options on the Honeybee coolingDetails and heatingDetails enable you to create this HVAC structure by making a single boiler and chiller for any HVAC systems that have this option toggled on. Furthermore, in the case of VRF systems, you can also centralize the ventilation system, using the grouping of zones around a given HVAC to assign which zone terminals are connected to a given heat pump.
More HVAC Templates Added - As the profession continues to push the industry standard towards lower-energy HVAC systems, Honeybee intends to keep up. In this release, we have included a few more templates for modeling advanced HVAC systems including Radiant Ceilings, Radiant Heated Floors + VAV Cooling, and Two Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) systems. Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) systems have also gotten a large boost as it is now possible to model these systems with more efficient water-source loops. The next release will include the ability to model central ground source systems that use hydronics for heating cooling delivery.
Run THERM Simulations Directly from Grasshopper - Anyone who has used the THERM workflow in the past likely realized that, while Honeybee can write the THERM file, you would still have to open model in THERM yourself and hit “simulate” to get results. Now that LBNL has started a transition to becoming more open, they have graciously allowed free access for everyone to run THERM from a command line. What this means for Honeybee is that you no longer need to open THERM at all in order to get results and you can now work entirely in Rhino/Grasshopper. This also opens up the possibility of long parametric runs with THERM models since you can now automatically run simulations and collect results as you animate sliders, use galapagos, etc. A special thanks is due to the LBNL team for exposing this feature, including Setphen Selkowitz, Christian Kohler, Charlie Curcija, Eleanor Lee, and Robin Mitchell.
All Options Exposed for THERM Boundary Conditions - To finish off the full implementation of THERM in Honeybee, a final component has been added called “Honeybee_Custom Radiant Environment.” This component completes the access to all boundary condition options that THERM offers, including separate radiant and air temperatures, different view factor models, and the specification of additional heat flux (which is typically used to account for solar radiation).
Improvements to Schedule-Generating Components - Many of you who have watched the Honeybee energy modeling video tutorials have likely gotten in the habit of using CSV schedules for everything. While this is definitely one valid way to work, it is not always the most efficient since simple schedules can be specified much more cleanly to EnergyPlus/OpenStudio and the use of CSVs can also make it difficult to share your energy models (since you have to send CSV files along with the schedules themselves). This release adds two new schedule components that should take care of a lot of cases where CSV schedules were unnecessary. The new “Constant Schedule” component allow you to quickly make a schedule that is set at a single value or a set of constantly repeating 24-hour values. The second component allows you to create “Seasonal Schedules” by connecting “week schedules” from the other schedule components along with analysis periods in which these seek schedules operate. Together, these will hopefully make our schedule-generating habit a bit better as a community.
Lastly, many of you may know Mingbo Peng as the current maintainer of the Design Explorer web interface and the Colibri components under TTToolbox. Both of these tools have been revolutionary in enabling “brute force” studies of design spaces (aka. Grasshopper scripts where one runs all combinations of a set of sliders). Now, Mingbo has graced Ladybug with the aforementioned image viewer component and it is with pride that we welcome Mingbo Peng to the development team!
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.Cheers!
The Ladybug Tools Development Team
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