eather data so it cannot be easily compared to Archsim. My account of the differences between Honeybee and Archsim will be far from complete but here are the key ones that I am aware of:
1) This difference is a bit of a superficial one but points to a deeper thinking about how the software should be used. Honeybee has many more components than Archsim, which means that Honeybee has a steeper learning curve than Archsim and will take longer to master. Along with this, you may also encounter a general mentality in the Honeybee community that "you should not be running a certain type of simulation unless you know how it works" whereas I know that Archsim is a bit more amenable to making things fast and easy to set up even when you are not sure what is going on under the hood. However, as a result of the large number of components in Honeybee, it is more open-ended, customizable, and includes more freedom in terms of cases that you can run and the parameters of the energy simulation that you can change than Archsim. You will also notice that, while there is a general ethos in the Honeybee community that you should not be running certain simulations unless you know what you are doing, we try to provide you with many resources to educate yourself if you are motivated. For example, we have long component descriptions that we assemble into documentation books like this (https://www.gitbook.com/book/mostapharoudsari/honeybee-primer/details), hours of video tutorial playlist like this one (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-SgW4uDtNSMLeiUmA8YXEHT_), and many GH example files on a github-based file sharing system (https://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/index.html). Not to mention a community of people who would respond to discussions like this one.
2) Archsim as a standalone application will soon be no more and will be instead distributed with the DIVA daylight analysis tool (http://diva4rhino.com/). While I am unclear on the exact trajectory of DIVA, it currently has a price tag attached to it and so I would assume that the future of Archsim will also carry this price tag. On the other hand, Honeybee and any derivative software will forever be free and open source under the GPL licence (https://github.com/mostaphaRoudsari/Honeybee/blob/master/License_Honeybee_GPL.txt).
3) This third point is a bit of a reiteration of the last one but Honeybee is open source, meaning that, if you need a feature of EnergyPlus that is not yet implemented on either interface, you can usually add it in yourself with a few lines of python code in Honeybee. This type of workflow is not possible with Archsim since it is closed source and requires you to use EnergyPlus's text editor interface after Archsim has exported an IDF in order to implement any additional EnerygPlus features.
4) The libraries and templates for Honeybee come from OpenStudio - the open source interface for EnergyPlus (https://www.openstudio.net/), which is supported by the US Department of Energy (just like EnergyPlus). Since Honeybee is open source, it is able to make use of the large database of building type schedules/loads and constructions that have been assembled by the OpenStudio team over the last several years as well as OpenStudio's SDK. I can also say that almost all of the development efforts of the Honeybee team are now focused now on integrating efforts with OpenStudio, including an exporter from Honeybee to OpenStudio that should be fully functional for the next stable release. I am not certain of the current extent of Archsim's libraries but, last I had checked, the creator was pulling them from his own experience and, as such, only had a few libraries to choose from. For all of my knowledge, through, this may be changing with the integration of Archsim with DIVA.
Let me know if this is helpful and, if anyone has more up-to-date knowledge on Archsim than I, please post there.
-Chris…
ave pointed out, if the older version of Honeybee EPZone does not have the recirculatedAirPerArea proprety, then it must be the cause of the error as I am using the Honeybee_Export to OpenStudio component (VER 0.0.58 Nov_07_2015). Given the discrepancy between the version of the Honeybee components used to setup everything in the file all the way prior to the point feeding the zones' data into the Export to Open Studio component, I can see different options/questions to tackle this issue:
1- I have the OpenStudio 1.9.0 that works with EnergyPlusV8-3-0 installed on my computer and the reason that I had to use the newer version of the Honeybee_Export to OpenStudio component (VER 0.0.58 Nov_07_2015) is that I had initially received an error message using the component of the same version as consistent with the rest of the project (VER 0.0.57 Jul_15_2015) with the following content:
"Cannot find OpenStudio libraries. You can download the libraries from the link below. Unzip the file and copy it to C:\Users\Alireza\AppData\Roaming\Ladybug\OpenStudio and try again. Click on the link to copy the address.https://app.box.com/s/y2sx16k98g1lfd3r47zi"
The download link provided in the error message appears to be not active and thereby, I could not follow the instructions on the error message and make the Hoenybee_Export to OpenStudio component (VER 0.0.57 Jul_15_2015) work.
Therefore, if there is a way to make this version (VER 0.0.57 Jul_15_2015) of the Hoenybee_Export to OpenStudio component work by downloading the OpenStudio libraries or switching to a legacy version of the OpenStudio application prior to 1-9-0, then probably this would be one option to solve this issue.
2- When I realized I could not download the OpenStudio libraries as described in section 1 (see above) and make the Honeybee_Export to OpenStudio Component (VER 0.0.57 Jul_15_2015) work with the installed OpenStudio application (V1-9-0), I updated the entire installation of Ladybug + Honeybee User Object files to the new version (Ladybug_0_0_61 and Honeybee_0_0_58). This time the Honeybee_Export to OpenStudio component (VER 0.0.58 Nov_07_2015) seemed to be working with the installed OpenStudio application (V1-9-0) as I did not receive any error messages about missing OS libraries. However, I could not make things work since all other components in my project (eg. Creat HB Zones,Creat HB Surface) have been setup with the 0.0.57 version and obviously, the updated version of the Honeybee User Objects (V0.0.58) could not recognize my HB component of the previous version in the file.
If there is a way to make 'in-place' updates of HB components, for example updating the Honeybee_Create HB Zones in the file without having to re-wire everything from scratch, then it probably would work as the updated version will include the 'recirculatedAirPerArea' property. Otherwise, given the complexity of the scene, it appears to be impossible for me to start everything from scratch and setup the entire scene with the new version of HB components.
3- If none of the options in the last two sections (see above) would be possible, I was wondering if there is a way to open the zones' data as the outcome of the Honeybee_Solve Adjacency component (prior to feeding this data to the Honeybee_Open Studio Systems component and subsequently, to the the Hoenybee_Export to Open Studio) in a text-editor and manually add the missing recirculatedAirPerArea property to the zones' data; then probably I could do that and then eventually feed it to the Hoenybee_Export to Open Studio component.
These are the three options that I could think of in order to tackle this issue of mine. I apologize for the extended reply but I figured it would be better to give a more comprehensive description of my problem and previous attempts to solve it.
Any helps is most appreciated.
Please let me know if you need further information about the described issues in each section or the simulation scene setup in general.
Thank you,
Alireza
…
n the z axis I can not, here's the problem, because the movement is not only on the z axis, I can't do a serie with this vector. I tried to do it by differents columns or rows but its impossible for me.
2. Another problem. How I can fill a surface like this with tetrahedrons? What about change the size of this tetrahedrons? Is it possible like a fractal? :Si'm still working...
Thank you!
Finally I have completed the cloud!! I am a little bit fool. With the help of some sketches it was not so difficult! :).
I found the movement pattern of my tetrahedrons
Then I found the points inside my surface!
But now I cant create lines between points like in the begining of the process, with the pattern with points 1, 2, 3, 4. What I have to do?
??????????
Bye!!!…
er). With the command "End Bulge" I noticed that G2 moves perpendicular to G1! But with an increase which is not equal... and is different, every time, depending on the angle between G0 and G1 and G2. How do I predict the position of G2 compared to G1 simulating the "End Bulge" command? Thank you for your professional answers.
^___^
Below you can see an example with a curve crimson ... If I move G1 of 1 unit G2 moves of 0.42 units (perpendicular) .. If I move of 2 units the next step is 0.46 unit... 3 units --> step 0,50 units... etc.
And each time changes depending on the initial conditions (G0/G1/G2 angle).
…
Added by Lucius Santo at 4:21pm on September 20, 2012
or GH with: 1. Animation Timeline 2. Rendering 3. API
Summary:
Animation Timeline: Smooth animation system that plays at the real-world speed; so you know the robot will run just right when you upload the code.
Rendering: Extensive options and outputs; so you can generate amazing videos.
API: Access our functions through Python and C# scripting; so you can manage parameters and actions for complex processes for each target.
More info:
Animation Timeline:
Build an animation from a list of Planes, it's that easy! Get these from points, curves or surfaces. Download the example files with the trial and test it yourself.
The unique Timeline component displays all the important robot warnings and the digital Input/Ouput:
RED – clash detection BLUE - singularities YELLOW – over rotation ORANGE – out of reach Digital Inut/Output: red=off, green=on
Rendering:
IO smoothly interpolates between all the Planes you set. This means you can generate keyframes for positions between Planes too e.g. you have two planes defining a tool path, IO can generate 2000 keyframes. Smooooth!
Rendered in full colour as standard, not GH red :-)
LiveBaking - let's you use Rhino render settings in real-time (can be a bit slow!)
Slider animation - use the native 'Animate' option to export hi-res images and create videos easily. Just set the number of frames you need (hint: divide total time in seconds by the frames-per-second rate)
Bake unlimited meshes as keyframes for export to render-pipelines in 3DS etc.
API
Accessing the IO functions through Python and C# let's you build more powerful definitions. You can assign data to every position the robot reaches, allowing you to control speed, acceleration, wait-times, actions and more. Examples comparing C# with Python are included in the examples files.
You can also use teh API build your own plugins that use the IO timeline to do all the hard work like IK and creating valid code, while you enjoy developing your new process...
Check out the website for more features and videos of the example definitions: www.robots.io
Download the PDF guide: 150314_IO_Primer_v1.pdf.
See www.robots.io for more info and pricing.
Developed by RoboFold Ltd. Used by leading academics, researchers and professionals.
…
Added by Gregory Epps at 10:15am on November 7, 2014
nd the challenge "Building the Invisible: Informing Digital Design with Real World Data". Information about each Workshop Cluster can be found here:
Cyber GardensUse the ForceUrban FeedsSuspended DreamsInteracting with the CityAgent ConstructionAuthored SensingPerforming SkinsResponsive Acoustic SurfacingHybrid Space Structure Typologies
The SmartGeometry 2011 Workshop will take place at CITA http://cita.karch.dk/
Applications to attend the SmartGeometry 2011 Workshop in Copenhagen will close on 31st January 2011. General Conference registration will open within 1 month.
We hope to see you there!
****************************************************
Workshop 28th-31st March
Shop Talk 1 April
Symposium 2 April
Reception 2 April
These events follow the highly successful previous SG events in Barcelona 2010, San Francisco 2009, Munich 2008, New York 2007, Cambridge/London, UK 2006 and multiple preceding events.
Click here for more info...
This year's Challenge is entitled:BUILDING THE INVISIBLEInforming Digital Design with Real World Data
THE PREMISEVast streams of data offer a rich resource for designers. By incorporating external information into our design processes the autonomy of the design is challenged. User data, energy calculations, embedded sensing, material and structural simulation, human behaviour and perception, particle flows and force fields allows design to be situated and responsive. From the simulation of megacities to the solid modelling of material systems, design has the potential to be informed by the real. Design sits not separate from is environment but inhabits an ecological system, open, dynamic and interdependent, diverse, partially self-organising, adaptive, and fragile. Across scale and within time we now have the chance to instil architecture with an immanent intelligence creating new relationships between the user, the built and its ecosphere.THE OPPORTUNITYSystems theorists suggest that data is only a raw material. It can be differentiated from information, knowledge and wisdom. Understanding is multi-levelled: understanding of relations, understanding of patterns, understanding of principles. As digital designers our challenge is in harnessing the power of computation to assist us in informing our design process. Computers help us collect, manage and analyse the environment and inform us about an abundance of data. Our challenge is to use these inputs in a meaningful way to help us make better informed design decisions.THE AIMSG 2011 explores how the incorporation of real world data challenges existing design thinking. The SG 2011 workshop aim is to create physical prototypes of design systems to be exhibited in the SG2011 exhibition.
The SmartGeometry Group is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the use of computational tools in architecture and engineering. SG brings professionals, academics, and industry together to explore the next generation of digital design. SG Workshops are non-platform specific, believing it is the methodology, not the tool, that matters.
…
Added by Shane Burger at 11:23am on January 6, 2011
arq, que se celebrará entre el 28 de Enero y el 1 de Febrero de 2013 en el Colegio de Arquitectos de Granada.
El taller está destinado a arquitectos, artistas y diseñadores, tanto como profesionales, como estudiantes de grado y posgrado, que, sin necesidad de haber tenido ningún contacto previo con entornos de programación o herramientas informáticas de dibujo paramétrico o generativo, están interesados en probar y experimentar con las opciones que nos pueden ofrecer a los diseñadores.
El taller está dividido en tres bloques:
Curso intensivo: del 28 de Enero al 30 de Febrero, en horario de mañana, de 10 a 14. Taller de proyectos: del 28 de Enero al 30 de Febrero, por la tarde, de 16 a 20; y el 31 de Febrero, durante todo el día.
Presentaciones: viernes 1 de Febrero, mañana y tarde.
Utilizaremos Grasshopper, el editor algorítmico asociado al software de modelado tridimensional y dibujo Rhinoceros, por su facilidad de aprendizaje, al tratarse de un entorno gráfico, facilidad de adquisición, al ser gratuito y haber disponible una versión de prueba de Rhinoceros también gratuita, y amplia difusión en los últimos años. Y lo emplearemos tanto como modelador, como conector entre otros softwares y varias disciplinas. Por este motivo, también utilizaremos algunos de sus plug-ins, como Geco, para análisis ambiental, Elk, para enlazarlo con OpenStreetMap o Kangaroo, para simulación de sistemas físicos.
Lo único que necesitas es un ordenador portátil (si no pudieras conseguir), hacer el ingreso con el importe correspondiente y mandarnos tus datos y el recibo bancario del ingreso a smartlabgranada@gmail.com. Puedes ver los detalles en el apartado de Inscripción. El resto del material, tanto software como hardware, lo ponemos nosotros.
Nuestro acercamiento a estas herramientas es entusiasta acerca del potencial creativo que pueden ofrecer a diseñadores y artistas, pero también crítico y especulativo. Nos alejamos tanto de una posición puramente formalista, como del estricto funcionalismo, a los que desde los últimos años frecuentemente se ha asociado a esta disciplina.…
Added by Miguel Vidal at 8:42am on January 19, 2013
east make all our algorithms thread-safe, so they can all be called from multiple threads, this is the first step towards multi-threading.
But multi-threading is not just something you switch on or off, it's an approach. Let's take the meshing of Breps for example. Let's assume that at some point one or more breps are added to the document. The wireframes of these breps can be drawn immediately, but the shading meshes need to be calculated first. How do we go about doing this? Allow me to enumerate some obvious solutions:
We put everything on hold and compute all meshes, one at a time. Then, when we're done we'll yield control back to the Rhino window so that key presses and mouse events can once again be processed. This is the simplest of all solutions and also the worst from the users point of view.
We allow the views to be redrawn, mouse events and key presses to be handled, but we perform the meshing in a background thread. I.e. whatever processor cycles are left over from regular use are now put to work on computing meshes. Once we're done computing these meshes we can start drawing the shaded breps. This is a lot better as it doesn't block the UI, but it also means that for a while (potentially a very long time) our breps will not be shaded in the viewport. This approach is already a lot harder from a programming perspective because you now have multiple threads all with access to the same Breps in memory and you need to make sure that they don't start to perform conflicting operations. Rhino already does this (and has been doing for a long time) on a lot of commands, otherwise you wouldn't be able to abort meshing/intersections/booleans etc. with an Escape press.
So we can compute the meshes on the UI-thread or on a background thread. How about using our multiple cores to speed up the process? Again, there are several ways in which this can be achieved:
Say we have a quad-core machine, i.e. four processors at our disposal. We could choose to assign the meshing of the first brep to the first processor, the second brep to the second processor, the third brep to the third processor and so on. Once a processor is done with the meshing of a specific brep, we'll give it the next brep to mesh until we're done meshing all the breps. This is a good solution when multiple breps need to be meshed at once, but it doesn't help at all if we only need to compute the mesh for a single brep, which is of course a very common case in Rhino.
To go a level deeper, we need to start adding multi-threading to the mesher itself. Let's say that the mesher is set up in such a way that it will assign each face of the brep to a new core, then -once all faces have been meshed- it will stitch together the partial meshes into a single large mesh. Now we've sped up the meshing of breps with multiple faces, but not individual surfaces.
We can of course go deeper still. Perhaps there is some operation that is repeated over and over during the meshing of a single face. We could also choose to multi-thread this operation, thus speeding up the meshing of all surfaces and breps.
All of the above approaches are possible, some are very difficult, some are actually not possible if we're not allowed to break the SDK. A further problem is that there's overhead involved with multi-threading. Very few operations will actually become 4 times faster if you distribute the work across 4 cores. Often one core will simply take longer than the other 3, often the partial results need to be aggregated which takes additional cycles and/or memory. What this means is that if you were to apply all of the above methods (multi-thread the meshing of individual faces, multi-thread the meshing of breps with multiple faces and multi-thread the meshing of multiple breps) you're probably worse off than you were before.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia
* an example would be the z-sorting of objects in viewport prior to repainting, which is a step performed on every redraw as far as I know.…
the results myself and I am open to changing the name/description of the input based on what you have found here. modulateFlowOrTemp is not the best name for what seems to be going on and we should change it to reflect more what is happening in the IDF.
Here is how I am understanding the results of the different cases:
1) When the variable flow option is selected (and the outdoor air set to "None"), the heating and cooling of the space seems to happen only through re-circulation of the indoor air. My comparison to a VAV system was not appropriate and perhaps it would be better to compare it to a window air conditioner or a warm air furnace, which, as far as I understand, only re-circulate indoor air and do not bring in outside air.
2) My reasoning for the name modulateFlowOrTemp came mostly from my realization that the supply air temperature remained within the defined limits when the variable flow option is selected (and the outdoor air set to "None"). When the outdoor air was set to Maximum or Sum, the supply air temperature went way out of the temperature limits that I initially set. I realize now that the flows are varying in both cases and the name of the input really must change.
3) I think that the reason why we don't see any effect from the air side economizer is because the heating/cooling energy results that you get from an ideal air system are just the sum of the sensible and the latent heat added/removed from the zone by the system. This value of heat added or removed from the zone does not change whether the added/removed heat comes from outside air or from a cooling/heating coil. Since there is no cooling coil or boiler or chiller in an ideal air system, there is no way to request an output of the energy added/removed by such a coil or chiller as opposed to that removed/added by outside air. In other words, the air side economizer option on the ideal air system is practically useless because it does not help us differentiate the cooling that comes from the outside air vs. that which comes from a coil. All that it does is change the outdoor air fraction while keeping the reported cooling/heating values the same.
Please let me know if you think that this explanation makes sense, Burin and, in light of all this, I am very interested in your suggestions.
From my own perspective, I am now convinced that the default should definitely have the outside air requirements set to "None" since, otherwise, we cannot distinguish cooling/heating that happens from addition of outside air and that which must be supplied by a coil. At least when we get rid of the outside air requirement, we can be sure that the ideal air system values are only showing heating/cooling from a coil or HVAC system.
I have decided to remove the airsideEconomizer input since it seems to give misleading expectations. I am going to recommend here on out that, if you want to estimate the effect of increasing outside air on cooling, you should use the "Set EP Airflow" component, use fan-driven natural ventilation, and you should connect a custom CSV schedule of airflow. You will have to create such a schedule with native GH components using the outside air temperature, your zone setpoints, and the times that you are cooling in your initial run of E+. Either you do this or you set up a full-blown system with OpenStudio.
I have also decided to get rid of the heatRecovery input since it seems like this will also produce misleading expectations by the same logic.
Lastly, I am going to change the name of the modulateFlowOrTemp_ input to outdoorAirReq_. The default will be to have no indoor air requirement as stated above but you can input either "maximum" or "sum" to have the IDF run accordingly.
Let me know if this sounds good or if you have suggestions. Updated GH file attached. The github has the new Ideal Air Loads component. Make sure that you have sync correctly and restart GH after updating your components.
-Chris…
with this machine.
As Jason says, Rhino and Grasshopper are mainly single-threaded, so I prioritized single core speed and got an i7 4790k, which comfortably overclocks to 4.7GHz (with a decent air cooler, but no fancy liquid cooling).
The Kangaroo2 solver is actually multi-threaded now, but the difference this makes is not great as you might imagine. Using 4 cores is certainly nowhere near 4 times faster, because although parts of the calculation are easily parallelized, everything still needs to be recombined at each iteration, and this is usually the bottleneck. I think there is still room for some improvement in how it is multi-threaded, but I wouldn't hold your breath for any massive changes on this front soon.
I'd be interested to know how the performance scales with the Xeon chips (more cores, significantly more expensive, but relatively low clock speeds). At the time I made the guess that they weren't worth it, but it would be good to really test this out.
RAM is relatively cheap these days, so I went with 32GB of it at 2133MHz. It does seem that the speed of the RAM matters, as enabling XMP in the BIOS (to make it run above the default 1333) seemed to make a noticeable difference.
Graphics-wise my personal feeling is that the gaming oriented GTX cards offer better value than the much more expensive 'professional' Quadro range - and have read that the hardware between the 2 has historically been very similar or even identical despite the Quadros being several times the price, with the difference being mainly in the drivers. There are some threads on discourse.mcneel.com about this, and it seems that recent GTX cards like the 970 do very well in Holomark (the Rhino performance benchmarking tool).
I got a GTX 770 (this was just before the 900 series came out), which is probably way overkill just for Rhino/Grasshopper, as they don't use the GPU for more than display (Though some of the render plugins do, and I think for those more CUDA cores is what matters, so there GTX is probably still better value.)
Probably swapping this for a much cheaper card wouldn't make much difference to Rhino/GH performance anyway (though if you want to use the PC for other stuff like gaming or virtual reality it does).
I don't have much experience with AMD cards, so can't comment on how they compare to Nvidia.
Eventually I do hope to make Kangaroo run the physics on the GPU, and potentially this does have a big speed impact. Nvidia recently released some impressive demos of their FLEX engine, which really fly with a decent graphics card. That is very much game-physics, and not suitable for most of the things Kangaroo is used for, but theoretically Kangaroo could also be adapted to use CUDA (or OpenCL), though it involves a lot of big changes, and I don't have a timeline for this yet.
In the much shorter term there are some things in the pipeline that should speed up Kangaroo for certain things like collisions between large numbers of objects, just by using some different algorithms.
Altogether my machine was still well under €2K, and I've been really happy with it. That said, the difference in performance between this and my 4 year old €700 i5 laptop is actually not that huge in day-to-day Grasshopper usage. It does seem that there is a strong case of diminishing returns with buying a PC - I'd hazard a guess that even spending 3 times this amount (as another thread on this forum was discussing recently) you'd be hard pushed to get anything that made a really significant difference to the experience of using it, and if you really want to spend more money, you would be better off just upgrading more frequently (and getting a nice monitor(s)).
Anyway, a long ramble, I hope some of it is useful. As I said, I'm no hardware expert, and would be interested to hear different opinions.
I also think it will be nice to make a simple benchmarking tool for Kangaroo and have people run it on their various machines and report back results (as with Holomark), to help others make informed decisions on these things. I'll try and put something together for this soon.
…