currently within a fake euphoria framework - blame China/UAE) and a potential decision about doing/developing this or doing that … well …anyway … read and enjoy.
AEC matters: The good, the bad and the ugly.
The bad news: Rhino is NOT suitable for the job (although some use it … but only in the sense that people use Modo for the so called “hard modeling”). By job I mean things up to shop drawing level + specs + you and me (we call it Final level) – nothing to do with sketches and outlines of some abstract “schematic” topology.
The ugly news: The so called Design-Construct approach gains exponentially momentum especially in countries the likes of China/UAE/BRICS (95% of the whole AEC activity worldwide happens there). DeCo means: AEC engineers deliver some kind of study in a preliminary level and the main contractor splits (outsourcers) the job and assigns the study completion AND the construction to various sup-constructors. That thing appeared first – in a large scale - in Dubai 15 years ago. This means that the era of Sergio Pininfarina is over and out: welcome anonymous Toyota designer. In plain English: days of construction corporations fast replacing practices. Dead men walking.
The good news: All AEC related apps (Revit, AECOsim, Allplan and the likes) are in a lethargic state as regards the brave new world (based on the archaic level driven organization schemas etc etc). Of course they all claim the exact opposite and point that support BIM (nobody mention PLM) better than the other guy. But the 21st century – helped by 2 forthcoming unavoidable crisis (a) about shortage of water (b) about transition from carbon to hydrogen economy – isn’t about bureaucracy: think cost/resources optimization and “fitness” rather than China/UAE type of liquid trend. Days of euphoria fast approaching the Wall.
Top to bottom and visa versa.
Old days Titans (Oscar, Mies, Walter, Pierre Luigi, Frank, Eero, blah blah) outlined things (mostly using crayons) and the rest were struggling to translate these in reality in an one way vector like process : Top to bottom that is. These days the inverse gains momentum : when in the whole consider the part … validate … redo … validate … redo. This means bottom to top geared with top-to-bottom. In plain English : child imposes rules to parent and parent imposes rules to child. This means classic MCAD feature/history modeling (CATIA/NX/MS). This is something that Rhino can’t do (not to mention that Rhino is a surface modeler – a rather critical fact).
The parts that are bigger than the whole.
Go there ( http://www.behance.net/gallery/2885057/a-myriad-of-cables) are inspect the whole thing: it’s a parametric nightmare made with the other guy (Generative Components – slower than a Skoda + bugs + why bother?). But the whole (masts and membranes and the likes) means nothing here: focus to the details that are critical for connecting this with that. Complex feature driven solids that are made with internal (on a per se basis) parameters (like fillets required for casting or radius for cable anchoring) whilst they comply with external rules/parameters (cable angles, topology clash issues etc etc). So the whole outlines possibilities … and the part either can follow…or the part must change…or the whole must change. Can you do that with GH/Rhino? And if not what’s missing? (lot’s of things to be honest).
Some other "similar" things:
The narrow picture.
I agree with what others already said and with pretty much all Ola’s points – especially the visual drag-and-drop path mapper (i.e. a visual data manipulator so to speak) and the enable/disable components in groups capability.
Some other suggestions:
A multi canvas capability. As things are right now…it’s like working in Rhino in one view (rather unsuitable I guess). In fact …since overlapping views they don’t work in Rhino…well…you know, he he.
A working auto profile arrangement capability (non twisted Loft/Sweep and the likes). Worth 1Bn dollars that one.
Ability to locate components that caused this or that in the Rhino view: meaning a 2 way communication approach : GH makes things happen in Rhino and things can indicate their cause in the GH canvas.
A robust collection of components that bake stuff in nested blocks (emulating some primitive assembly/component way of thinking). Why may you ask? Well … the whole objective is to talk to CATIA (via STEP) don’t you agree? CATIA makes things happen in real-life not Rhino.
A robust collection of components that can create real-life parametric tensile membrane solutions (get some inspiration from FormFinder: useless because it’s academic but good to point the way). Membranes (and geodesics) are the future.
I could continue at infinitum but IMHO the big picture is worth 12345,67 “focused” GH improvements.
May the Force (the dark option) be with us all.
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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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option, after downloading check if .ghuser files are blocked (right click -> "Properties" and select "Unblock"). Then paste them in File->Special Folders->User Object Folder. You can download the example files from here. They act in similar way, Ladybug Photovoltaics components do: we pick a surface, and get an answer to a question: "How much thermal energy, for a certain number of persons can my roof, building facade... generate if I would populate them with Solar Water Heating collectors"? This information can then be used to cover domestic hot water, space heating or space cooling loads:
Components enable setting specific details of the system, or using simplified ones. They cover analysis of domestic hot water load, final performance of the SWH system, its embodied energy, energy value, consumption, emissions... And finding optimal system and storage size. By Dr. Chengchu Yan and Djordje Spasic, with invaluable support of Dr. Willian Beckman, Dr. Jason M. Keith, Jeff Maguire, Nicolas DiOrio, Niraj Palsule, Sargon George Ishaya and Craig Christensen. Hope you will enjoy using the components! References: 1) Calculation of delivered energy: Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, John Wiley and Sons, J. Duffie, W. Beckman, 4th ed., 2013. Technical Manual for the SAM Solar Water Heating Model, NREL, N. DiOrio, C. Christensen, J. Burch, A. Dobos, 2014. A simplified method for optimal design of solar water heating systems based on life-cycle energy analysis, Renewable Energy journal, Yan, Wang, Ma, Shi, Vol 74, Feb 2015
2) Domestic hot water load: Modeling patterns of hot water use in households, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lutz, Liu, McMahon, Dunham, Shown, McGrue; Nov 1996. ASHRAE 2003 Applications Handbook (SI), Chapter 49, Service water heating
3) Mains water temperature Residential alternative calculation method reference manual, California energy commission, June 2013. Development of an Energy Savings Benchmark for All Residential End-Uses, NREL, August 2004. Solar water heating project analysis chapter, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, 2004.
4) Pipe diameters and pump power: Planning & Installing Solar Thermal Systems, Earthscan, 2nd edition
5) Sun postion and POA irradiance, the same as for Ladybug Photovoltaics (Michalsky (1988), diffuse irradiance by Perez (1990), ground reflected irradiance by Liu, Jordan (1963))
6) Optimal system and storage tank size: A simplified method for optimal design of solar water heating systems based on life-cycle energy analysis, Renewable Energy journal, Yan, Wang, Ma, Shi, Vol 74, Feb 2015.…
ion of both Ladybug and Honeybee. Notable among the new components are 51 new Honeybee components for setting up and running energy simulations and 15 new Ladybug components for running detailed comfort analyses. We are also happy to announce the start of comprehensive tutorial series on how to use the components and the first one on getting started with Ladybug can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sj_XGz3kzHUoWmpWDXNep1O
A second one on how to use the new Ladybug comfort components can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sho45_D4BV1HKcIz7oVmZ8v
Here is a short list highlighting some of the capabilities of this current Honeybee release:
1) Run EnergyPlus and OpenStudio Simulations - A couple of components to export your HBZones into IDF or OSM files and run energy simulations right from the grasshopper window! Also included are several components for adjusting the parameters of the simulations and requesting a wide range of possible outputs.
2) Assign EnergyPlus Constructions - A set of components that allow you to assign constructions from the OpenStudio library to your Honeybee objects. This also includes components for searching through the OpenStudio construction/material library and components to create your own constructions and materials.
3) Assign EnergyPlus Schedules and Loads - A set of components for assigning schedules and Loads from the Openstudio library to your Honeybee zones. This includes the ability to auto-assign these based on your program or to tweak individual values. You can even create your own schedules from a stream of 8760 values with the new “Create CSV Schedule” component. Lastly, there is a component for converting any E+ schedule to 8760 values, which you can then visualize with the standard Ladybug components
4) Assign HVAC Systems - A set of components for assigning some basic ASHRAE HVAC systems that can be run with the Export to OpenStudio component. You can even adjust the parameters of these systems right in Grasshopper.
Note: The ASHRAE systems are only available for OpenStudio and can’t be used with Honeybee’s EnergyPlus component. Also, only ideal air, VAV and PTHP systems are currently available but more will be on their way soon!
5) Import And Visualize EnergyPlus Results - A set of components to import numerical EnergyPlus simulation results back into grasshopper such that they can be visualized with any of the standard Ladybug components (ie. the 3D chart or Psychrometric chart). Importers are made for zone-level results as well as surface results and surfaces results can be easily separated based on surface type. This also means that E+ results can be analyzed with the new Ladybug comfort calculator components and used in shade or natural ventilation studies. Lastly, there are a set of components for coloring zone/surface geometry with EnergyPlus results and for coloring the shades around zones with shade desirability.
6) Increased Radiance and Daysim Capabilities - Several updates have also been made to the existing Radiance and Daysim components including parallel Radiance Image-based analysis.
7) Visualize HBObject Attributes - A few components have been added to assist with setting up honeybee objects and ensuing the the correct properties have been assigned. These include components to separate surfaces based on boundary condition and components to label surfaces and zones with virtually any of their EnergyPlus or Radiance attributes.
8) WIP Grizzly Bear gbxml Exporter - Lastly, the release includes an WIP version of the Grizzly Bear gbXML exporter, which will continue to be developed over the next few months.
And here’s a list of the new Ladybug capabilities:
1) Comfort Models - Three comfort models that have been translated to python for your use in GH: PMV, Adaptive, and Outdoor (UTCI). Each of these models has a “Comfort Calculator” component for which you can input parameters like temperature and wind speed to get out comfort metrics. These can be used in conjunction with EPW data or EnergyPlus results to calculate comfort for every hour of the year.
2) Ladybug Psychrometric Chart - A new interactive psychrometric chart that was made possible thanks to the releasing of the Berkely Center for the Built Environment Comfort Tool Code (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort-tool). The new psychrometric chart allows you to move the comfort polygon around based on PMV comfort metrics, plot EPW or EnergyPlus results on the psych chart, and see how many hours are made comfortable in each case. The component also allows you to plot polygons representing passive building strategies (like internal heat gain or evaporative cooling), which will adjust dynamically with the comfort polygon and are based on the strategies included in Climate Consultant.
3) Solar Adjusted MRT and Outdoor Shade Evaluator - A component has been added to allow you to account for shortwave solar radiation in comfort studies by adjusting Mean Radiant Temperature. This adjusted MRT can then be factored into outdoor comfort studies and used with an new Ladybug Comfort Shade Benefit Evaluator to design outdoor shades and awnings.
4) Wind Speed - Two new components for visualizing wind profile curves and calculating wind speed at particular heights. These allow users to translate EPW wind speed from the meteorological station to the terrain type and height above ground for their site. They will also help inform the CFD simulations that will be coming in later releases.
5) Sky Color Visualizer - A component has been added that allows you to visualize a clear sky for any hour of the year in order to get a sense of the sky qualities and understand light conditions in periods before or after sunset.
Ready to Start?
Here is what you will need to do:
Download Honeybee and Ladybug from the same link here. Make sure that you remove any old version of Ladybug and Honeybee if you have one, as mentioned on the Ladybug group page.
You will also need to install RADIANCE, DAYSIM and ENERGYPLUS on your system. We already sent a video about how to get RADIANCE and Daysim installed (link). You can download EnergyPlus 8.1 for Windows from the DOE website (http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/?utm_source=EnergyPlus&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=EnergyPlus%2Bredirect%2B1).
“EnergyPlus is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model energy and water use in buildings.”
“OpenStudio is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance.”
Make sure that you install ENERGYPLUS in a folder with no spaces in the file path (e.g. “C:\Program Files” has a space between “Program” and “Files”). A good option for each is C:\EnergyPlusV8-1-0, which is usually the default locations when you run the downloaded installer.
New Example Files!
We have put together a large number of new updated example files and you should use these to get yourself started. You can download them from the link on the group page.
New Developers:
Since the last release, we have had several new members join the Ladybug + Honeybee developer team:
Chien Si Harriman - Chien Si has contributed a large amount of code and new components in the OpenStudio workflow including components to add ASHRAE HVAC systems into your energy models and adjust their parameters. He is also the author of the Grizzly Bear gbxml exporter and will be continuing work on this in the following months.
Trygve Wastvedt - Trygve has contributed a core set of functions that were used to make the new Ladybug Colored Sky Visualizer and have also helped sync the Ladybug Sunpath to give sun positions for the current year of 2014
Abraham Yezioro - Abraham has contributed an awesome new bioclimatic chart for comfort analyses, which, despite its presence in the WIP tab, is nearly complete!
Djordje Spasic - Djordje has contributed a number of core functions that were used to make the new Ladybug Wind Speed Calculator and Wind Profile Visualizer components and will be assisting with workflows to process CFD results in the future. He also has some more outdoor comfort metrics in the works.
Andrew Heumann - Andrew contributed an endlessly useful list item selector, which can adjust based on the input list, and has multiple applications throughout Ladybug and Honeybee. One of the best is for selecting zone-level programs after selecting an overall building program.
Alex Jacobson - Alex also assisted with the coding of the wind speed components.
And, as always, a special thanks goes to all of our awesome users who tested the new components through their several iterations. Special thanks goes to Daniel, Michal, Francisco, and Agus for their continuous support. Thanks again for all the support, great suggestions and comments. We really cannot thank you enough.
Enjoy!,
Ladybug + Honeybee Development Team
PS: If you want to be updated about the news about Ladybug and Honeybee like Ladybug’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LadyBugforGrasshopper) or follow ladybug’s twitter account (@ladybug_tool).
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doing this with the current tools or a bit of scripting since the Flickr API allows you to make requests in a REST format, but utilizing the Flickr.net API library makes it much simpler.
First and foremost, you need a Flickr API key...do you have one of those?
A great way to get to know the Flickr API is with the API Explorer. Here is a link to the page for the flickr.photos.search method explorer: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/explore/flickr.photos.search
The cool thing about this page is that it generates the REST Http call towards the bottom. So, here is what I did:
1. Grab the coordinates of the bounding box per Flickr API request:
bbox (Optional)
A comma-delimited list of 4 values defining the Bounding Box of the area that will be searched. The 4 values represent the bottom-left corner of the box and the top-right corner, minimum_longitude, minimum_latitude, maximum_longitude, maximum_latitude. Longitude has a range of -180 to 180 , latitude of -90 to 90. Defaults to -180, -90, 180, 90 if not specified. Unlike standard photo queries, geo (or bounding box) queries will only return 250 results per page. Geo queries require some sort of limiting agent in order to prevent the database from crying. This is basically like the check against "parameterless searches" for queries without a geo component. A tag, for instance, is considered a limiting agent as are user defined min_date_taken and min_date_upload parameters — If no limiting factor is passed we return only photos added in the last 12 hours (though we may extend the limit in the future).
So, I went to Google Earth, picked a city (London, UK) and dropped two pins:
This gave me two locations, which I can put into the Explorer Page next to the bbox option. Here is what I put for these two points: -0.155941,51.496768,-0.116783,51.511431
2. Check has_geo
3. In extras, type in geo
4. Make the call!
You will see a list of responses in an XML format, these responses will be from the first page. Geolocated photos are limited to 250 / page, so you will have to grab them page by page.
If you want to add more options (minimum upload date, maximum upload date, etc) you can do this as well)
The best is at the bottom, you get the full http call for this: http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=ffd44f601393a46e86aa3a5f8a013360&bbox=-0.155941%2C51.496768%2C-0.116783%2C51.511431&has_geo=&extras=geo&format=rest&api_sig=b42330e5d1523bd5fe60c2ad43acde99
Notice this call has some other api key, you should eventually replace this with your own.
You could copy and paste this into a browser and you will get the results with the latitude and longitude:
So this is really what you need to know to do this through GH. Since gHowl has an XML parser component that can access files on the web, you should be able to use the same http call into this component.
Eventually, we get a response, and we need to grab the lat and lon data. With gHowl we can map these to xyz coordinates, and generate the heatmap...this is just a linear mapping:
Attached are both the Rhino file and the Grasshopper file, as well as the image underlay.
I am working on a series of components that makes this more straightforward, but for now, this should get you started.
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peuvent se diviser une surface avec ne importe quel motif imaginable. 3. Ici, je fournir un moyen de le faire via Lunchbox ... cela fonctionne mais il est fixe et donc nous avons besoin de jouer avec des arbres de données afin de créer le motif approprié par cas. 4. L'autre composante est un joint C # qui fait beaucoup de choses autres que de diviser ne importe quelle collection de points avec de nombreux modèles (voir le modèle ANDRE que je ai fait pour vous). 5. Vous devez décomposer une polysurface en morceaux afin de travailler sur les subdivisions. 6. Je donne une autre définition ainsi que pourrait agir comme un tutoriel sur la façon de traiter des ensembles de points via des composants de GH standards et des méthodes classiques.
Avertissez si tous ceux-ci apparaissent floue pour vous: Si oui, je pourrais écrire une définition utilisant des composants de GH classiques - mais vous perdrez les variations de motifs de division.
mieux, Peter
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ing the maps to the broader community.
At the moment, there are just a few known issues left that I have to fix for complex geometric cases but they should run smoothly for most energy models that you generate with Honeybee. Within the next month, I will be clearing up these last issues and, by the end of the month, there will be an updated youtube tutorial playlist on the comfort tools and how to use them.
In the meantime, there's an updated example file (http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Indoor_Microclimate_Map) and I wanted to get you all excited with some images and animations coming out of the design part of my thesis. I also wanted to post some documentation of all of the previous research that has made these climate maps possible and give out some much deserved thanks. To begin, this image gives you a sense of how the thermal maps are made by integrating several streams of data for EnergyPlus:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJaTMtWDRHMExvLUk/view?usp=sharing)
To get you excited, this youtube playlist has a whole bunch of time-lapse thermal animations that a lot of you should enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sj3ehUTSfKa1IHPSiuJU52A
To give a brief summary of what you are looking at in the playlist, there are two proposed designs for completely passive co-habitation spaces in New York and Los Angeles.
These diagrams explain the Los Angeles design:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJM0JkM0tLZ1kxUmc/view?usp=sharing)
And this video gives you and idea of how it thermally performs:
These diagrams explain the New York design:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJS1BZVVZiTWF4MXM/view?usp=sharing)
And this video shows you the thermal performance:
Now to credit all of the awesome people that have made the creation of these thermal maps possible:
1) As any HB user knows, the open source engines and libraries under the hood of HB are EnergyPlus and OpenStudio and the incredible thermal richness of these maps would not have been possible without these DoE teams creating such a robust modeler so a big credit is definitely due to them.
2) Many of the initial ideas for these thermal maps come from an MIT Masters thesis that was completed a few years ago by Amanda Webb called "cMap". Even though these cMaps were only taking into account surface temperature from E+, it was the viewing of her radiant temperature maps that initially touched-off the series of events that led to my thesis so a great credit is due to her. You can find her thesis here (http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/72870).
3) Since the thesis of A. Webb, there were two key developments that made the high resolution of the current maps believable as a good approximation of the actual thermal environment of a building. The first is a PhD thesis by Alejandra Menchaca (also conducted here at MIT) that developed a computationally fast way of estimating sub-zone air temperature stratification. The method, which works simply by weighing the heat gain in a room against the incoming airflow was validated by many CFD simulations over the course of Alejandra's thesis. You can find here final thesis document here (http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/74907).
4) The other main development since the A. Webb thesis that made the radiant map much more accurate is a fast means of estimating the radiant temperature increase felt by an occupant sitting in the sun. This method was developed by some awesome scientists at the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment (CBE) Including Tyler Hoyt, who has been particularly helpful to me by supporting the CBE's Github page. The original paper on this fast means of estimating the solar temperature delta can be found here (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/89m1h2dg) although they should have an official publication in a journal soon.
5) The ASHRAE comfort models under the hood of LB+HB all are derived from the javascript of the CBE comfort tool (http://smap.cbe.berkeley.edu/comforttool). A huge chunk of credit definitely goes to this group and I encourage any other researchers who are getting deep into comfort to check the code resources on their github page (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort_tool).
6) And, last but not least, a huge share of credit is due to Mostapha and all members of the LB+HB community. It is because of resources and help that Mostapha initially gave me that I learned how to code in the first place and the knowledge of a community that would use the things that I developed was, by fa,r the biggest motivation throughout this thesis and all of my LB efforts.
Thank you all and stay awesome,
-Chris…
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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t. So here we go!
1. Honeybee is brown and not yellow [stupid!]...
As you probably remember Honeybee logo was initially yellow because of my ignorance about Honeybees. With the help of our Honeybee expert, Michalina, now the color is corrected. I promised her to update everyone about this. Below are photos of her working on the honeybee logo and the results of her study.
If you think I'm exaggerating by calling her a honeybee expert you better watch this video:
Thank you Michalina for the great work! :). I corrected the colors. No yellow anymore. The only yellow arrows represent sun rays and not the honeybee!
2. Yellow or brown, W[here]TH Honeybee is?
I know. It has been a long time after I posted the initial video and it is not fun at all to wait for a long time. Here is the good news. If you are following the Facebook page you probably now that the Daylighting components are almost ready.
Couple of friends from Grasshopper community and RADIANCE community has been helping me with testing/debugging the components. I still think/hope to release the daylighting components at some point in January before Ladybug gets one year old.
There have been multiple changes. I finally feel that the current version of Honeybee is simple enough for non-expert users to start running initial studies and flexible enough for advanced users to run advanced studies. I will post a video soon and walk you through different components.
I think I still need more time to modify the energy simulation components so they are not going to be part of the next release. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to set up and run a wrong energy simulation and I really don’t want to add one new GIGO app to the world of simulation. We already have enough of that. Moreover I’m still not quite happy with the workflow. Please bear with me for few more months and then we can all celebrate!
I recently tested the idea of connecting Grasshopper to OpenStudio by using OpenStudio API successfully. If nothing else, I really want to release the EnergyPlus components so I can concentrate on Grasshopper > OpenStudio development which I personally think is the best approach.
3. What about wind analysis?
I have been asked multiple times that if Ladybug will have a component for wind study. The short answer is YES! I have been working with EFRI-PULSE project during the last year to develop a free and open source web-based CFD simulation platform for outdoor analysis.
We had a very good progress so far and our rockstar Stefan recently presented the results of the work at the American Physical Society’s 66th annual DFD meeting and the results looks pretty convincing in comparison to measured data. Here is an image from the presentation. All the credits go to Stefan Gracik and EFRI-PULSE project.
The project will go live at some point next year and after that I will release the Butterfly which will let you prepare the model for the CFD simulation and send it to EFRI-PULSE project. I haven’t tried to run the simulations locally yet but I’m considering that as a further development. Here is how the component and the logo looks like right now.
4. Teaching resources
It has been almost 11 months from the first public release of Ladybug. I know that I didn't do a good job in providing enough tutorials/teaching materials and I know that I won’t be able to put something comprehensive together soon.
Fortunately, ladybug has been flying in multiple schools during the last year. Several design, engineering and consultant firms are using it and it has been thought in several workshops. As I checked with multiple of you, almost everyone told me that they will be happy to share their teaching materials; hence I started the teaching resources page. Please share your materials on the page. They can be in any format and any language. Thanks in advance!
I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying/will enjoy the longest night of the year. Happy Yalda!
Cheers,
-Mostapha
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