can toggle these modes from either the Canvas Toolbar, the Remote Control Panel or via shortcuts Ctrl+1,2 or 3
These are pretty self explanatory so I will keep it brief:
No Preview will completely switch off the preview of the Grasshopper Objects in the Rhino Viewports.
Wireframe Preview similar to Disable Meshing will disable any render meshes but keep any curves or Edges visible.
Shaded Preview will shade the preview...
There are two more Icons in this section of the Display Menu:
Selected Only Preview
Preview Settings
Also available on the Canvas Toolbar.
Selected Only Preview is a useful feature for following what your definition is doing at stages along the process without having to switch all previews off and manually turning individual ones back on as you go.
Without Selected Only Preview Toggled
With Selected Only Preview Toggled:
Preview Settings is the area within Grasshopper where you can modify the colours - including transparency - Grasshopper uses to display objects in the Rhino Viewport.
The first thing you should do before altering any settings is to Drag the Default Colours onto the green plus sign to add them to the Presets. This will enable you to restore them easily.
For future reference the default settings are:
Normal = Hue: 0º, Sat: 100, Val: 59, A:100
Selected = Hue: 120º, Sat: 100, Val: 59, A:100
Apart from accounting for taste this feature is particularly useful for anyone that is colour blind[2]:
The way to restore a colour from the preset list is to drag it from the right hand panel to either the Normal or Selected option on the Left
[2] There is a very interesting discourse topic on the McNeel Forums about Red/Green Colour Blindness.
work carried out by Jørgen Holo
…
guages I'd recommend all use the RhinoCommon SDK and thus all have access to the same functionality.
How long would it take me to understand and write my own code?
If you already know how to program, it probably won't take too long. If you're past the hurdle of what it means to declare and assign variables, how conditionals and loops work and what scope is, you've already rounded the hardest corner.
Is it even worth it?
That really depends. "Learn programming" is clearly not blanket good advice. Most people out there do not have to learn programming to be happy with their lives and successful in their careers. For some people it can make a small difference, and for a few people it can make a huge difference. If you feel you're in the 'some' category then this is indeed a question you have to answer. Note that the investment for learning programming is a continuous process. Unless you keep up your skills and learn about new stuff that becomes available, you'll lose the ability to write successful code over time.
Where do I start?
Step 1 is to answer the previous question. It is unlikely that anyone besides yourself can answer it, but you can start by making a list of things you do manually now that may be programmable. Then make a list of the things you are unable to do now but which you might be able to do with programming. If while looking at these lists your reaction is: "meh", the answer is probably no.
Step 2 is to pick a language. This is again a very personal thing; there's no wrong answer, because there's no right answer.
Step 3 is to start learning this language. My experience is that the best way to learn a programming language is to try and solve a real problem that you understand very well. If the problem statement is nebulous or poorly understood, you'll be learning two things and that's a recipe for unnecessary frustration.
Here are my thoughts on language:
Python: I don't use Python myself, I can sort of read it while moving my lips. I don't particularly like Python though. The indentation sensitiveness stresses me out, and I find the lack of type-safety disturbing. However it is a good language for mathematical/scientific programs. There are lots of additional code libraries you can easily import that will ease the development of mathematically intense algorithms.
C#: I like C# very much, but it does suffer from geekerosis. A lot of the keywords used in the language are not self-explanatory (abstract, sealed, virtual). For me this is no longer a problem as I've memorised what they all mean. C# is designed to be an efficient language to write, rather than an easy one to learn.
The great thing about C# though is that there's a huge amount of material out there for learning it. It is one of the most popular, mature and modern languages you can hope to pick.
VB: I learned VBScript as my first language, and then moved on to VB5, VB6 and VB.NET. It is somewhat more friendly than C#, and functionally it is almost identical. The switch from VB to C# is reasonably low-threshold and there are excellent tools for translating VB code to C# and vice versa.
Since you already know some Python, it probably makes the most sense to continue on that path. If you want to switch, C# is more like Python than VB, so C# would be my next suggestion.
As for where to get information... you have 4 major options when developing code for Rhino.
If it's a question about the language itself, StackOverflow is a great resource. It can be a pretty hostile place for beginner questions, but I find that mostly the questions I'm asking have been asked already and the answers on SO tend to be good. In fact usually when I google my questions, the first few hits are always SO posts.
If it's a question about the Rhino SDK or Grasshopper, you can ask it either on the GH forums (where we are now), or on Discourse. We're not as quick on the draw as SO, but we do know about Rhino.
If you're looking for a basic explanation of what a keyword or a type is for, perhaps with an example, MSDN is the best first choice. In fact if you google the name a of a .NET type, the first hit is almost always an MSDN page.…
Added by David Rutten at 2:03pm on December 3, 2014
umbrella of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and I am going to try to separate them out in order to give you a sense of the current capabilities in LB+HB.
1) UHI as defined as a recorded elevated air temperature in an urban area:
If you have access to epw files for both an urban area and a rural area, you can use Ladybug to visualize and deeply explore the differences between the two weather files. Ladybug is primarily a tool for weather file visualization and analysis and it can be very helpful for understanding the consequences of UHI on strategies for buildings or on comfort. This said, if you do not have both rural and urban recorded weather data or you want to generate your own weather files based on criteria about urban areas (as it sounds like you want to do), this definition might not be so helpful.
2) UHI defined by air elevated air temperature but viewed as a computer model-able phenomenon resulting primarily from urban canyon geometry, building materials, and (to a lesser degree) anthropogenic heat:
This definition seems to fit more with they type of thing that you are looking for but it is unfortunately very difficult and computationally intensive such that we do not currently have anything within Ladybug to do this right now. I can say that the state-of-the art for this type of modeling is an application called Town Energy Budget (TEB) and this is what all of the advanced UHI researches that I know use (http://www.cnrm.meteo.fr/surfex/spip.php?article7). Unfortunately for those trying to use it in professional practice, it can take a while to get comfortable with it and it currently runs exclusively on Linux (this does mean that it is open source, though, and that you can really get deep into the assumptions of the model). A couple years ago, a peer of mine translated almost all of TEB into Matlab language making it possible to run it on Windows if you have Matlab. He wrapped everything together into a tool called the Urban Weather Generator (UWG), which can take an epw file of a rural area and warp it to an urban area based on inputs that you give of building height, materials, vegetation, anthropogenic heat, etc. I would recommend looking into this for your project, although, bear in mind that is it not open source like the original TEB tool and that you may need to get a (very expensive) copy of MATLAB (http://urbanmicroclimate.scripts.mit.edu/uwg.php).
3) UHI as defined by a thermal satellite image of an urban area depicting an elevated average radiant environment that reaches a maximum a the city center and changes by land use:
This is the definition of UHI that I am most familiar with and was the basis of much of my past research. I feel that it is also a definition of UHI that is a bit more in line with where a lot of contemporary UHI research is headed, which is away from the notion of UHI as a macro-scale meteorological phenomena that is averaged as an air temperature over a huge area towards one that accepts that different land uses have different microclimates and (importantly) different radiant environments. While the air temperature difference between urban and rural areas usually does not change more than 1-4 C, the radiant environment can be very different (on the order of 10-15 C differences). The best way to understand UHI in this context is with Thermal satellite images, for which there is ha huge database of publicly available data on NASA's glovis website (http://glovis.usgs.gov/) or their ECHO website (http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov/reverb/#utf8=%E2%9C%93&spatial_map=satellite&spatial_type=rectangle). I tend to use thermal data from LANDSAT 5-8 and ASTER satellites in my research. Unfortunately, there is a lot f bad data with a lot of cloud cover mixed in with the really good stuff and it can take some time to find good images. Also, there aren't too many programs that read the GeoTiff file format that you download the data as. I know that ArcGIS will read it, a program called ENVI will read it (I think that the open source QGIS can also red it). I have plans to write a set of components to bring this type of data into Rhino and GH (I may get to it a few months down the line).
4) UHI as a computer model-able notion of "Urban Microclimate" with consideration of local differences and the local radiant environment:
This is where a lot of my research has lead and, thankfully, is an area that Honeybee can help you out a lot with. EnergyPlus simulations can output information on outside building surface temperatures and these can be very helpful in helping get a sense of the radiant environment around individual buildings. Right now, I am focusing just on using this data to fully model the indoor environments of buildings as you see in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNylb42FPIc&list=UUc6HWbF4UtdKdjbZ2tvwiCQ
I have plans to move this methodology to the outdoors once I complete this initial application to the indoors. For now, you can use the "Surface result reader" and the "color surfaces based on EP result" components to get a sense of variation in the outside temperature of your buildings.
I hope that this helped,
-Chris
…
ther math and logic. i can usually conceptualise what i want to do and cobble some semi working thing together but don't know which components to use and how to patch it. so i'm super happy to have someone who knows what he's doing to find this interesting.
and i'm glad you mention the fanned frets again, there is one input parameter that's still missing for the multiscale frets to be fully parametric, it's the angle of the nut or which fret should be straight. it depends a bit on personal preferences and playing posture what is more comfortable. so being able to adjust this easily would be cool. again i have no idea how the maths for that work or if you can just rotate each fret the same amount around it's middle point. The input either as fret number (for the straight fret) or as a simple slider from bridge to nut should do as input setting.
Here are the two extremes and the middle ground:
i've been thinkin today while analysing your patches and cleaning up my mess what exactly the monster should do.
Here are the input parameters needed, i think it's the complete list
scale length low E string
scale length high e string
fret angle/straight fret
string width at nut
string width at bridge
number of frets
fretboard overhang at nut (distance from string to fretboard bounds)
fretboard overhang at last fret
string gauges
string tensions
fretboard radius at nut (for compound radius fretboard radius at bridge is calculated with the stewmac formula)
fretwire crown width
fretwire crown height
action height at nut (distance between bottom of string and fretwire crown top)
action height at last fret
pickup 1 neck position
pickup 2 middle position
pickup 3 bridge position
nut width
the pickup positions should be used to draw circles for the magnet poles on each string so they are perfectly aligned and can be used for the pickup flatwork construction. ideally they would need a rotation control aligning the center line of the pickup so it's somewher between the last fret angle and bridge angle. personally i do this visually depending on the design i'm looking for, some people have huge theories on pickup positioning but personally i don't believe in it.
that should result in everything needed to quickly generate all the necessary construction curves or geometry for nut/fingerboard/frets/pickups. this is the core of what makes a guitar work, the more precise this dynamic system is the better the guitar plays and sounds.
i posted another thread trying to understand how i could use datasets form spreadsheets,databse, csv to organize the input parameters. What would make sense for the strings for example is hook into a spreadsheet with the different string sets, i attached one for the d'Addario NYXL string line which basically covers all combos that make sense.
The string tension is an interesting one, and implmenting it would sure be overkill albeit super interesting to try. it should be possible to extrapolate from the scale length of each string what the tension for a given string gauge of that string would be so that you could say 'i want a fully balanced set' or 'heavy top light bottom) and it would calculate which SKU from d'addario would best match the required tension. All the strings listed in the spreadsheet are available as single strings to buy.
i'm trying to reorganize everything which helps me understand it. i just discovered the 'hidden wires' feature which is great since once i understood what a certain block does or have finished one of my own, i can get the wires out of the way to carry on undistracted. a bit risky to hide so many wires but it makes it so much easier not to get completely lost :-)
btw, the 'fanned fret' term is trademarked, some guy tried to patent it in the 80's which is a bit silly since it has been done for centuries. there is a level of sophistication above this as well, check out http://www.truetemperament.com/ and that really is something else. it really is astounding how superior the tuning is on those wigglefrets, the problem is that it's rather awkward for string bending and also you can't easily recrown or level the frets when they are used. …
or a couple of thingies.
Pattern.gh
I defined parametrically a triangle which I then smoothed out to become more like a blob shape. After that I created a pretty simple pattern that I had in my mind (costed me a lot of time to make this in GH) and finally wanted to rotate each element as it goes higher . The dispatching part seems to be working pretty slow, so it might need an optimization, but I’m still happy with the result as it shows exactly what I wanted, so this is a minor issue in my case.
I then decided to try tessellating my extrusions. You’ll see the voronoi script which is a blob-group in the same Pattern.gh:
I had an idea of something and started the code from scratch, then decided to watch tutorials and implement the code shown there. I somehow coped to combine my code with this in the tutorials, but since my knowledge of Grasshopper is zero to basic my code seems to be very unoptimized and lagging.. When dragging the sliders, it takes a lot of time to compute the changes, although, I’m working on a 24gigs 6th gen i7 machine. It might also need optimization.
Here comes the first tricky part that I couldn’t sort out in an elegant way neither in Grasshopper nor in Rhino. I want a smooth transition between the wall and the ceiling, so that the voronoi tessellation doesn’t get interrupted. If I was to do it in Rhino I’d make a curve with a filleted edge which I’d then revolve/sweep along a rail.
Pattern.gh:
Second thing is – I’ve defined a shape which I want to rotate at a certain degree as it goes higher, however, I don’t have the knowledge to make this happen automatically and just copy the script over and over again. Is there a chance to somehow “loop” the code and parametrically define the degree of rotation and amount of units in the loop?
Next thing is I want to somehow be able to rotate each “6-storey-building” dependently on its surrounding buildings, so that their “terraces” never overlap. I’m using quotes, since they’re still some silly shapes that have nothing to do with buildings and terraces. The principle has to be something like gear wheels or the so-called rack wheels . There has to be some pace which I could set parametrically, but I’m still unsure how to do that in Grasshopper.
The pre-last thing is that I want to control the height of each “building” based on let’s say a topography. I presume this could be done somehow with height maps or some gradient mapper connected to curvature analysis. Not really sure how something like this would work, but I’ve seen such codes that control height depending on a variable.
The last one is more or less similar to the previous. I want to be able to “dissolve” the pattern that I initially created and make it irregular. I suppose this could be done with attractor curve, but again this is just a guess. Please note that this is a top view and the shapes on the upper-left corner have got more "wings" which means there is more floors in the according building. Let's say the buildings in the upper-left corner are 6-7 floors high, in the middle are 4-5 and to the right they're only 3 floors high.
Sorry for that many questions in a single thread. Please let me know if I have to split them in separate threads. All this information is needed for learning purposes. I’m now preparing myself for my bachelor thesis and try as much things as I could, so that I’ll be ready for the final stage of my bachelor’s degree.
Many thanks in advance! Cheers!…
Analysis Tools (LAT). Our plugin has come a long way in the last 4 years and, while the legacy version will still include some small updates and contributions, we are confident in saying that the changes will be far fewer and the plugin more stable in the following months as we switch gears into the LAT effort. I can say personally that (save for a couple of small capabilities) I have made it through my list of critical features and I will hereafter be working on making these features cross-platform, cleanly-implemented, and well-documented in the new Ladybug Analysis Tools software package. As always, you can download the new release from Food4Rhino. Make sure to remove the older version of Ladybug and Honeybee and update your scripts.
The majority of changes with this release represent “icing on the cake” after a long, multi-year effort to connect to the major open source engines and datasets. So, without further adieu, here is the list of the new capabilities added with this release:
LADYBUG
Stereographic Sky Projections - Thanks to several code contributions from Byron Mardas, all Ladybug sky visualizations now support stereographic projections! Such projections are useful for understanding the hemispherical visualizations in a 2D format and they also make it easier to overlay different sky datasets on top of one another. Check here for an example file showing the sun path overlaid with helpful/harmful parts of the sky and see here for an example file using shading masks representing strategies (like an overhang) on top of the helpful / harmful portions of the sun path.
Wind Rose Upgrades - Devang Chauhan has added several new features to the Ladybug wind rose including both visual and numerical outputs of average wind velocity and frequency for each petal of the rose. Not only does this enhance the usefulness of the rose but it also paves the way for the use of the wind rose to set up CFD simulations once Butterfly is released in the near future. The new features of the wind rose can be seen in this hydra example file.
Complete Set of Local Thermal Discomfort Models - After the last release included components to evaluate radiant asymmetry discomfort (which can be modeled using these example files: 1, 2), today’s release completes Ladybug’s suite of local discomfort models from ASHRAE and the ISO by adding components to account for discomfort from cold draft. Specifically, two draft models have been added for different types of situations. The first is an older model published by P.O. Fanger, which was developed through experiments where subjects had cold air blown on the back of their neck (the most sensitive part of the body to draft). While this is useful for understanding a worst-case scenario, it can greatly overestimate the discomfort for cases of draft at ankle level - a more common occurrence that typically results from the tendency of cold air to sink. For this situation, a second draft discomfort model has been included, which is specifically meant to forecast ankle draft discomfort. The model is currently undergoing review for integration into ASHRAE-55 and a publication outlining the derivation of this model can be found here:
Liu, S., Schiavon, S., Kabanshi, A. and Nazaroff, W. (2016), Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied with Ankle Draft. Indoor Air. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/ina.12364 (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9076254n).
Special thanks is due to Shichao Liu, Toby Cheung and Stefano Schiavon for sharing the model and the results of their study with the development team. The integration of draft models completes the full integration of ASHRAE-55 and EN-15251 with Ladybug. Now, you can rest assured that, if there is a certain thermal comfort standard that you need to fulfill for a given project, you can model it with the ‘bug!
Window-Based Draft Model - With the integration of draft models, the first question that one might ask is “how should these models be applied to typical design cases?” While the (soon-to-be-released) Butterfly plugin for OpenFOAM should open up a Pandora’s box of possible situations, this release of Ladybug includes a simplified downdraft model from cold vertical surfaces, which helps model several typical cases of draft discomfort. The model has been validated across several papers:
Heiselberg, P. (1994). Draught Risk From Cold Vertical Surfaces. Building and Environment, Vol 29, No. 3, 297-301
Manz, H. and Frank, T. (2003). Analysis of Thermal Comfort near Cold Vertical Surfaces by Means of Computational Fluid Dynamics. Indoor Built Environment. 13: 233-242
It has been built into the “Ladybug_Downdraft Velocity” component and has been included in an example file illustrating discomfort from cold windows in winter. The example is intended to show when glazing ratio and window U-Values are small enough to eliminate perimeter heating - a practice that is aesthetically unpleasing, costly to maintain and wasteful in its energy use.
Operative Temperature on the Psychrometric Chart - This is a feature that should have been added a long time ago but we are finally happy to say that the Ladybug_Psychrometric Chart can draw a comfort polygon assuming that the air temperature and radiant temperature are the same value (aka. an operative temperature psychrometric chart). This operative temperature chart is the format that is needed to use the ASHRAE-55 graphical method and is generally a better representation of the range of comfort in cases where one does not intend to hold the radiant temperature constant. This operative temperature capability is now set as the default on the component but you can, of course, still bring back the older comfort polygon by simply plugging in a value for meanRadiantTemperature_.
Contour Map Visualizations - Using the same inputs as the Ladybug_Recolor Mesh component, the new Ladybug_Contour Mesh component allows you to generate contoured color graphics from the results of any analysis. Now, you to maximize the use of your high-resolution studies with contours that highlight thresholds and gradients!
Image Texture Mapping for Colored Meshes - Antonello DiNunzio has added the very useful Ladybug_Texture Maker component, which allows you to bake Ladybug colored meshes with image texture maps (as opposed to the classic method that used colored vertices). This enables the creation of transparent Ladybug meshes, making it even easier to overlay Ladybug graphics with one another and with Rhino geometry:
This component also adds the ability to render Ladybug + Honeybee meshes with other rendering programs like V-Ray and 3ds Max. So you can produce Ladybug graphics like this!
Finally, image-mapped textures are also the format required for gaming and Virtual Reality software like Unity and Augmented Reality programs like Augment. So now you can export your Ladybug meshes all of the way to the virtual world!
Rhino Sun Component - If you have ever had to set up the sun for a rendering plugin and wished that you could just take your Ladybug sun and use that, then you are in luck! Byron Mardas has contributed a component that lets you set the Rhino sun based on your EPW location data, your north direction (if different from the Y-Axis) and any time of day that you want. Not only does this make it easier to coordinate the Rhino sun with your Ladybug visualizations, but you can also use it for real time shadow previews by setting your Rhino view to “Rendered” and scrolling through a slider.
Rendered Ladybug Animations - With both the image texture mapping and the Rhino sun components released, your first thought might be “it would be great if I could use this all in a rendered animation!” Thankfully, Ladybug has added a new component to help you here. The Ladybug_Render View component works in essentially the same way as the Capture View component, allowing you to make a series of images as you animate through a slider. The major benefit here is that it works with both Rhino Render and V-Ray so that animations like this can be produced effortlessly:
Cone of Vision Added - Antonello Di Nunzio has added a component that allows you to visualize various cones of vision in order to help inform your view studies. You can fine tune parameters to include just text-readable or full peripheral vision and use the resulting view cone to constrict the results of your “Ladybug_View Analysis” studies.
Terrain WIP Components Released as the Gismo Plugin - Our friend Djordje has released a new plugin Gismo - a plugin for GIS environmental analysis. As a result the following 5 terrain components: Horizon Angles, Flow Paths, Terrain Shading Mask, Terrain Generator 2, Terrain Analysis, have been removed from Ladybug+Honeybee's WIP section and are added to Gismo.
HONEYBEE
Search, Select, and Import the Hundreds Outputs from EnergyPlus/OpenStudio - Many of the power users in our community know that EnergyPlus is capable of writing several hundred different outputs from the simulation (well beyond what the basic Honeybee result readers can import). While Honeybee has always allowed one to request these outputs by adding them to the simulationOutputs_ of the component, there has not been an official workflow for searching through all of the possible outputs or importing their specific results… until now! We have added the "Honeybee_Read Result Dictionary" component, which allows you to parse the Result Data Dictionary (or .rrd file) that EnergyPlus outputs during every run of a given model. This allows you to see all of the outputs that are available for the model and you can even search through this list to find a particular output that you are interested in. Once you find what you are looking for, simply copy the text output from the component into a panel and and plug this into simulationOutputs_. Then you can use the "Honeybee_Read EP Custom Result" component to bring your custom results into GH after rerunning the simulation. The example file of an evaporative cooling tower shows how to use the workflow to request and import in the energy removed by the tower.
OpenStudio HVAC System Sizing Results - After the full integration of HVAC in the last release, we realized that a number of people wanted to run EnergyPlus models simply to evaluate the size of the Heating/Cooling system in the model (obtained from the EnergyPlus autosize calculation that is run at the start of every simulation). Such a sizing calculation can be a great way to quantify the anticipated savings from a given strategy (like shading) on the size/cost of the building’s HVAC system. To get the results of the sizing calculation, all that one needs to do is connect the output eioFile from the OpenStudio component to the Honeybee_Read HVAC Sizing component. The outputs will indicate the peak heating/cooling loads of each zone (in Watts) as well as the size of each piece of HVAC equipment in the model. The next time that you are on a project that is about to value-engineer out an exterior shading system, use the workflow in the following example file to show that the client will probably end up paying for it with a more expensive HVAC system: Quantifying HVAC Sizing Impact of Shade.
Improved Memory Usage When Building Large Energy Models - As we take the capabilities of Honeybee to larger and larger models, many of us have begun to run up against a particular limitation of our machines: memory. After upgrading our machines to have 32 GBs of RAM, there was only one way left to alleviate the problem: restructure some of the code. Honeybee now uses an enhanced approach that ensures all the previous iterations of Honeybee objects will be removed from the memory once there is a change. In any case, the considerations of memory are definitely something that we intend to improve with the future Honeybee[+] plugin.
Workflow to Import gbXML Files - While GrizzlyBear has been around for several years, enabling us to export Honeybee zones to gbXML, we have gone for quite some time without a workflow to import gbXML files to Honeybee. The new Honeybee_gbXML to Honeybee component addresses this and establishes an easier path to import models from Revit into honeybee. You can read more about the component in this post.
Window Frame Capabilities Added to OpenStudio - After the implementation of LBNL THERM / WINDOW capabilities in the last two releases, there was one final bridge to build in the Honeybee workflow - fully connecting LBNL WINDOW to Honeybee’s OpenStudio workflow. This release of Honeybee will now write all FrameAndDivider objects exported from LBNL WINDOW glazing systems into the energy simulation, enabling you to account for the frame’s thermal bridging effects. As long as the construction is brought in with the Honeybee_Import WINDOW IDF Report component, the frames associated with the construction will be assigned to all windows that have the construction. Finally, it is worth noting that the current Honeybee will also write all glass spectral data as well as gas (or gas mixture) materials into the simulation. This means that essentially all properties of any IDF export that one makes from LBNL WINDOW can be factored into the OpenStudio energy simulation (with the only exception being BSDF materials).
OpenStudio Daylight Sensors Added - In our previous releases of Honeybee, the only means of correctly account for daylight sensors in an energy simulation was to run an annual daylight simulation and use the resulting schedules for the lighting in the energy simulation. However, this can take a lot of time and work to set up and run, particularly if the daylight control (at the end of the day) will be driven by just one sensor per room. Now, we have added another option, which uses OpenStudio/EnergyPlus’s built-in daylight controls. You can assign just a point and an illuminance target on the “Set Zone Thresholds” component and the lighting will be automatically adjusted in the course of the simulation. It should also be noted that the addition of daylight sensors has also coincided with the addition of blind/shade control based on glare. The same sensor point for daylight can be used to drive dynamic shades in the energy simulation based on glare experienced at this point. This example file shows how to set up daylight controls on the EnergyPlus model and check the lighting power results to see the effect.
Better Defaults for Natural Ventilation - After many good people wrote to me informing me that Honeybee overestimates natural ventilation airflow and I wrote back showing the way that I intended natural ventilation to be set up with the component, it dawned on me that I had selected some poor component defaults. Accordingly, this release includes a window-based natural ventilation option on the Set EP Airflow component that corrects for some of the common issues that I have seen. Insect screens are included by default and the component runs a general check to see if wind-driven cross ventilation is possible before auto-assigning it. The component will air on the side of more-conservative, lower airflow rates unless the user overrides the defaults. Finally, it’s worth noting that all of these changes have not affected the freedom of the Custom WindAndStack option on the component. The new defaults can be viewed in this example file.
CFD Results Can be Plugged into Microclimate Maps - In preparation for the (very soon) release of the Butterfly that connects to the OpenFOAM CFD platform, we just wanted to note that all of the microclimate map recipes can now take an input of a csv file with a matrix of CFD results for wind speed. For the time being, we have used these to produce very high-accuracy, high resolution maps of outdoor comfort. There will be more to follow soon!
We should also note that, in the last release I mentioned that we would be phasing out the EnergyPlus component so that all efforts are focused on the OpenStudio component. While I reiterate that all of the features of the EnergyPlus component are available in the OpenStudio component and I encourage everyone to use the OpenStudio component in order to take advantage of its HVAC capabilities, I have come to realize that many prefer to use the EnergyPlus component out of habit and have not yet gotten the time to understand why the OpenStudio component is an improvement over the EnergyPlus component. As a result, we have decided to leave the EnergyPlus component in place for the time being so that everyone has more time to understand this. The future Ladybug Analysis Tools platform will only interact with EnergyPlus through OpenStudio and so it is recommended that everyone use these two components in the Honeybee plugin will serve as an educational resource to understand our current path moving forward with OpenStudio.
Lastly, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Devang Chauhan and Byron Mardas to the developer team! As mentioned previously Devang has contributed several updates to the Ladybug Wind Rose in addition to finding and solving a multitude of bugs in other components. Byron has contributed code that has enabled the previously-mentioned stereographic sky projections along with a better method for running the Ladybug Sky Mask. Finally, Byron has contributed the Rhino Sun component, which allows you to coordinate your Rhino renders with your Ladybug data. Welcome to the Ladybug team, gentlemen!
As always let us know your comments and suggestions. Cheers!
Ladybug Analysis Tools Development Team…
looked at autodesk simulation cfd 2015 and was optimistic because it had an export plugin from revit, which i use anyway for material takeoffs and etc, but found that it did not take solar radiation into account. This was a downer because I have heard that solar radiation could effect indoor airflow - convection - as much as 50 percent at a time.
Then I searched again and found that Hyperworks, a software by altair technology can be coupled with a radiation software. So I went through the trouble of obtaining an educational license of Hyperworks. However, though some email exchange I have found that the coupling is a one-way. The radiation analysis software was used, I think, for understanding the solar loading for a SOM project called church of light.
The support guy said : "Unfortunately our coupling with Hyperworks is really a one way coupling. We can accept H coefficients from their software in RadTherm, but they will not read in our wall temps. That said, it still can be a useful coupling in the sense that you can run the analysis in Hyperworks, send H coefficients to RadTherm, and run the analysis to better understand radiation and conduction. Most importantly, that analysis can be done for longer transient analysis, but will require much less compute time and resources."
Not only did I not understand what he means by the H coefficients, my wanting to get a CFD understanding coupled with solar radiation was again, unsatisfied. In the mean while I had to finish a presentation so I haven't had the time to try to get some result on the natural ventilation. I would probably need to look into how their solutions work before I can understand if their software would "do the job"
Thank you for letting me know about your work on this. I downloaded the Honeybee_Set EP Natural Ventilation component and made sure that it is allowed, but it does not show up in grasshopper.
You pointed out that "The component (and the corresponding equation) is mostly meant for cases where you have zones with windows that are NOT connected by an air wall (or a larger airflow network)." I wondered if you are suggesting it would be a code violation for zones to be connected by an air wall for fire safety reasons. It would be a violation I guess, like not putting an fiber insulation or some kind of smoke stop between Spandrel panels and the edge of a floor plate would be a code violation for a typical office building.
There is a project by kevin daly architects where you can see a section drawing with what seems like a cfd analysis (could be an illustration)
it was my initial visualization/simulation goals were for a facade design I am working on
1) an average air velocity across a zone at noon, for example, if a passive design strategy like this was used. for this I am guessing cfd is not entirely necessary. probably means that it could be used earlier in a design process, too. This would be more about user comfort.
2) at a later phase, like in detailing facade components, if airflow is indeed as expected for a zone that is connected to an air wall / chimney like feature (and to see if there is a proper mixing of air)
3) and a projection of energy savings, of course.
After seeing a video of simulation cfd I was optimistic, but like I said sim cfd does not take account of solar loading. I think I would probably go ahead start with one zone with sim cfd first, try three zones stacked on top of each other, then try hyperworks and try to factor in solar radiation.
For analyzing multiple zones on different levels, being able to add a chimney would be especially useful, I think. Having said that, I don't have a lot of experience of using honeybee except for the daylight component so it would take some time for me to understand the components.
I hope some of the information here is useful for you. after all, both sim cfd and hyperworks are commercial softwares and somewhat different than the e plus project you are working on, I guess but still trying to address a similar problem.
so.. in cased you missed it I was asking I downloaded the Honeybee_Set EP Natural Ventilation component and made sure that it is allowed and placed in the user object foler, but it does not show up in grasshopper. what could be the reason?
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o express my gratitude. I've been experimenting with your definitions (and still am), but let me extend my question.
Actually what I'm trying to achieve, is to recreate another project by Andrew Kudless, the spore lamp (I mentioned the Chrysalis at the beginning just because of the animation, which wasn't included in the Spore Lamp presentation).
Basically the spore lamp seems to me to be something like a preliminary study to the Chrysalis III project (I think it's a similar approach).
Andrew stated on his site that he used kangaroo for this project, so the Spore Lamp consists in my opinion either of a relaxed voronoi 3d diagram (b-rep, b-rep intersection) on a sphere which then has been planarized, or more likely it is a sort of relaxed facet dome.
The trick is to:
1. obtain a nicely-balanced voronoish diagram (or facet dome cells)
2. keep each cell/polyline planar (or force them with kangaroo to be planar) in order to move scale and loft them later on.
Here is what I have by now. (files: matsys spore lamp attempt)
That's the closest appearance that I got so far (simple move scale and loft of facet dome cells with the amount of transformations being proportional to the power of the initial cell area: bigger cell = bigger opening etc.) - with no relaxation of the diagram. But it's obviously not the same thing as the matsys design.
Here are some of my attempts of facet dome relaxation, but well, it certainly still not the right approach, and most importantly I don't know how to keep or force the cells to be planar after the relaxation.
1. pulling vertices to a sphere - no anchor points. That obviously doesn't make sense at all, but the relaxation without anchor points gives at the beginning a pattern that is closer to what I am looking for. (files: relaxation 01)
2. pulling vertices to a sphere - two faces of the initial facet dome anchored (files: relaxation 02)
3. pulling vertices to the initial geometry (facet dome) no anchor points (files: relaxation 03)
The cell pattern of the lamp kinda looks like this:
you can find it here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/kangaroo-0-095-released?g...
Done with Plankton (of course without the "gradient increase" appearance), but in fact not, I took a look at Daniel Parker's Plankton example files, and it's not quite the same thing. Also the cells aren't planar...
The last problem is that during the relaxation attempts that I did, the biggest initial cells became enormous, and it's not like that in the elegant project by Andrew Kudless, that I'd like to achieve.
So to sum up:
Goal no 1: Obtain an elegant voronoi /facet dome cell pattern on a sphere (or an ellipsoid surface, whatever).
Goal no 2: Keep the cells planar in order to be able to loft them later and obtain those pyramidal forms, and assemble easily
Any ideas? Or maybe there's a completely different approach to that?…
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:
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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…