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?
…
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:
…
ree..
First-End List Component cannot manage branches inside every dimensions..
"Smart T8" Component is developed for managing the multi dimensional data tree with first-end algorithm.
It works with path index location..
"-1" or negative numbers mean the location of item..
"0" means the location of the last path index..
positive numbers mean the location from the back..
----
Now look at this example.. a simple 3-dimensional boxes..
In the data tree.. of {0;0;i;j} (k)
"k" is the item index.. Y direction..
"j" is the last path.. X direction..
and "i" is the level.. Z direction..
----
When index < 0 (i.e. "-1" or negative)
"Smart T8" performs like the First-End Item Component..
It selects first items in each list and puts them out to "F"..
and in this example.. they are boxes with same Y coordinate(=0)..
In the below image..
F(Red) M(Transparent Green) E(Blue) are classified by Y coordinates..
----
When index = 0
"Smart T8" focuses on the last path index..
It selects first list of every {0; 0; i; *} set of lists.. (i.e. every levels)
In this example.. they are boxes with same X coordinate(=0)..
because the last path means X grid..
In the below image..
F(Red) M(Transparent Green) E(Blue) are classified by X coordinates..
----
When index = 1
"Smart T8" focuses on the third path index.. (i.e. 1 step from the back)
It selects first list of every {0; 0; *; j} set of lists..
Actually in this case.. they are first levels of every YZ planes..
In this example.. they are boxes with same Z coordinate(=0)..
because "Smart T8" manages levels now (index=1)..
In the below image..
F(Red) M(Transparent Green) E(Blue) are classified by levels..
----
When index > 1.. (if it is meaningless index or out of range..)
It performs First-End List Component..
It selects only the first and end list of all lists..
----
The "Smart T8" component works with 3 or more dimensional data tree well..
Please control the focusing index and enjoy it.. :)
…
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…
nts for Ladybug too. They are based on PVWatts v1 online calculator, supporting crystalline silicon fixed tilt photovoltaics.
You can download them from here, or use the Update Ladbybug component instead. If you take the first option, after downloading check if .ghuser files are blocked (right click -> "Properties" and select "Unblock").
You can download the example files from here.
Video tutorials will follow in the coming period.
In the very essence these components help you answer the question: "How much energy can my roof, building facade, solar parking... generate if I would populate them with PV panels"?
They allow definition of different types of losses (snow, age, shading...) which may affect your PV system:
And can find its optimal tilt and orientation:
Or analyse its performance, energy value, consumption, emissions...
By Djordje Spasic and Jason Sensibaugh, with invaluable support of Dr. Frank Vignola, Dr. Jason M. Keith, Paul Gilman, Chris Mackey, Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari, Niraj Palsule, Joseph Cunningham and Christopher Weiss.
Thank you for reading, and hope you will enjoy using the components!
EDIT: From march 27 2017, Ladybug Photovoltaics components support thin-film modules as well.
References:
1) System losses:
PVWatts v5 Manual, Dobos, NREL, 2014
2) Sun postion equations by Michalsky (1988):
SAM Photovoltaic Model Technical Reference, Gilman, NREL, 2014
edited by Jason Sensibaugh
3) Angle of incidence for fixed arrays:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
4) Plane-of-Array diffuse irradiance by Perez 1990 algorithm:
PVPMC Sandia National Laboratories
SAM Photovoltaic Model Technical Reference, Gilman, NREL, 2014
5) Sandia PV Array Performance Module Cover:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
6) Sandia Thermal Model, Module Temperature and Cell Temperature Models:
Photovoltaic Array Performance Model, King, Boys, Kratochvill, Sandia National Laboratories, 2004
7) CEC Module Model: Maximum power voltage and Maximum power current from:
Exact analytical solutions of the parameters of real solar cells using Lambert W-function, Jain, Kapoor, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, V81 2004, P269–277
8) PVFORM version 3.3 adapted Module and Inverter Models:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
9) Sunpath diagram shading:
Using sun path charts to estimate the effects of shading on PV arrays, Frank Vignola, University of Oregon, 2004
Instruction manual for the Solar Pathfinder, Solar Pathfinder TM, 2008
10) Tilt and orientation factor:
Application for Purchased Systems Oregon Department of Energy
solmetric.com
11) Photovoltaics performance metrics:
Solar PV system performance assessment guideline, Honda, Lechner, Raju, Tolich, Mokri, San Jose state university, 2012
CACHE Modules on Energy in the Curriculum Solar Energy, Keith, Palsule, Mississippi State University
Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) Version 2.0, Hammond, Jones, SERT University of Bath, 2011
The Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) of Photovoltaics: Methodology and Comparisons with Fossil Fuel Life Cycles, Raugei, Fullana-i-Palmer, Fthenakis, Elsevier Vol 45, Jun 2012
12) Calculating albedo: Metenorm 6 Handbook part II: Theory, Meteotest 2007
13) Magnetic declination:
Geomag 0.9.2015, Christopher Weiss…
e a fundamental failure on my part. On the other hand, Grasshopper isn't supposed to be on a par with most other 3D programs. It is emphatically not meant for manual/direct modelling. If you would normally tackle a problem by drawing geometry by hand, Grasshopper is not (and should never be advertised as) a good alternative.
I get that. That’s why that 3D shape I’m trying to apply the voronoi to was done in NX. I do wonder where the GUI metaphor GH uses comes from. It reminds me of LabVIEW.
"What in other programs is a dialog box, is 8 or 10 components strung together in grasshopper. The wisdom for this I often hear among the grasshopper community is that this allows for parametric design."
Grasshopper ships with about 1000 components (rounded to the nearest power of ten). I'm adding more all the time, either because new functionality has been exposed in the Rhino SDK or because a certain component makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Adding pre-canned components that do the same as '8 or 10 components strung together' for the heck of it will balloon the total number of components everyone has to deal with. If you find yourself using the same 8 to 10 components together all the time, then please mention it on this forum. A lot of the currently existing components have been added because someone asked for it.
It’s not the primary components that catalyzed this thought but rather the secondary components. I was toying with a component today (twist from jackalope) that made use of three toggle components. The things they controlled are checkboxes in other apps.
Take a look at this jpg. Ignore differences; I did 'em quickly. GH required 19 components to do what SW did with 4 commands. Note the difference in screen real estate.
As an aside, I really hate SolidWorks (SW). But going forward, I’ll use it as an example because it’s what most people are familiar with.
"[...] has a far cleaner and more intuitive interface. So does SolidWorks, Inventor, CATIA, NX, and a bunch of others."
Again, GH was not designed to be an alternative to these sort of modellers. I don't like referring to GH as 'parameteric' as that term has been co-opted by relational modellers. I prefer to use 'algorithmic' instead. The idea behind parameteric seems to be that one models by hand, but every click exists within a context, and when the context changes the software figures out where to move the click to. The idea behind algorithmic is that you don't model by hand.
I agree, and disagree. I believe parametric applies equally to GH AND SW, NX, and so forth, while algorithmic is unique to GH (and GC and Dynamo I think). Thus I understand why you prefer the term. I too tend to not like referring to GH as a parametric modeler for the same reason.
But I think it oversimplifies it to say parametric modelers move the clicks. SW tracks clicks the same way GH does; GH holds that information in geometry components while SW holds it in a feature in the feature tree. In both GH and SW edits to the base geometry will drive a recalculation, but more commonly, it’s an edit to input data, beit equations or just plain numbers, that drive a recalculation.
I understand the difference in these programs. What brought me to GH is that it can create a visual dialog that standard modelers can’t. But as I've grown more comfortable with it I’ve come to realize that the GUI of GH and the GUI of other parametric modelers, while looking completely different, are surprisingly interchangeable. Do not misconstrue that I’m suggesting that GH should replace it’s GUI with SW’s. I’m not. I refrain from suggesting anything specific. I only suggest that you allow yourself to think radically.
This is not to say there is no value in the parametric approach. Obviously it is a winning strategy and many people love to use it. We have considered adding some features to GH that would make manual modelling less of a chore and we would still very much like to do so. However this is such a large chunk of work that we have to be very careful about investing the time. Before I start down this road I want to make sure that the choice I'm making is not 'lame-ass algorithmic modeller with some lame-ass parametrics tacked on' vs. 'kick-ass algorithmic modeller with no parametrics tacked on'.
Given a choice, I'd pick kick-ass algorithmic modeller with no parametrics tacked on.
2. Visual Programming.
I'm not exactly sure I understand your grievance here, but I suspect I agree. The visual part is front and centre at the moment and it should remain there. However we need to improve upon it and at the same time give programmers more tools to achieve what they want.
I'll admit, this is a bit tough to explain. As I've re-read my own comment, I think it was partly a precursor to the context sensitivity point and touched upon other stated points.
This now touches upon my own ignorance about GH’s target market. Are you moving toward a highly specialized tool for programmers and/or mathematicians, or is the intent to create a tool that most designers can master? If it’s the former, rock on. You’re doing great. If it’s the latter, I’m one of the more technically sophisticated designers I know and I’m lost most of the time when using GH.
GH allows the same freedom as a command line editor. You can do whatever you like, and it’ll work or not. And you won’t know why it works or doesn't until you start becoming a bit of an expert and can actually decipher the gibberish in a panel component. I often feel GH has the ease of use of DOS with a badass video card in front.
Please indulge my bit of storytelling. Early 3D modelers, CATIA, Unigraphics, and Pro-Engineer, were unbelievably difficult to use. Yet no one ever complained. The pain of entry was immense. But once you made it past the pain threshold, the salary you could command was very well worth it. And the fewer the people who knew how to use it, the more money you could demand. So in a sense, their lack of usability was a desirable feature among those who’d figured it out.
Then SolidWorks came along. It could only do a fraction of what the others did, but it was a fraction of the cost, it did most of what you needed, and anyone could figure it out. There was even a manual on how to use it. (Craziness!) Within a few short years, the big three all had to change their names (V5, NX, and Wildfire (now Creo)) and change the way they do things. All are now significantly easier to use.
I can tell that the amount of development time that’s gone into GH is immense and I believe the functionality is genius. I also believe it’s ease of use could be greatly improved.
Having re-read my original comments, I think it sounded a bit snotty. For that I apologize.
3. Context sensitivity.
"There is no reason a program in 2014 should allow me to make decisions that will not work. For example, if a component input is in all cases incompatible with another component's output, I shouldn't be able to connect them."
Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. Whether or not a conversion between two data types makes sense is often dependent on the actual values. If you plug a list of curves into a Line component, none of them may be convertible. Should I therefore not allow this connection to be made? What if there is a single curve that could be converted to a line? What if you want to make the connection now, but only later plan to add some convertible curves to the data? What you made the connection back when it was valid, but now it's no longer valid, wouldn't it be weird if there was a connection you couldn't make again?
I've started work on GH2 and one of the first things I'm writing now is the new data-conversion logic. The goal [...] is to not just try and convert type A into type B, but include information about what sort of conversion was needed (straightforward, exotic, far-fetched. etc.) and information regarding why that type was assigned.
You are right that under some conditions, we can be sure that a conversion will always fail. For example connecting a Boolean output with a Curve input. But even there my preferred solution is to tell people why that doesn't make sense rather than not allowing it in the first place.
You bring up both interesting points and limits to my understanding of coding. I’ve reached the point in my learning of GH where I’m just getting into figuring out the sets tab (and so far I’m not doing too well). I often find myself wondering “Is all of this manual conditioning of the data really necessary? Doesn’t most software perform this kind of stuff invisibly?” I’d love to be right and see it go away, but I could easily be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.
5. Components.
"Give components a little “+” or a drawer on the bottom or something that by clicking, opens the component into something akin to a dialog box. This should give access to all of the variables in the component. I shouldn't have to r-click on each thing on a component to do all of the settings."
I was thinking of just zooming in on a component would eventually provide easier ways to access settings and data.
I kinda like this. It’s a continuation of what you’re currently doing with things like the panel component.
"Could some of these items disappear if they are contextually inappropriate or gray out if they're unlikely?"
It's almost impossible for me to know whether these things are 'unlikely' in any given situation. There are probably some cases where a suggestion along the lines of "Hey, this component is about to run 40,524 times. It seems like it would make sense to Graft the 'P' input." would be useful.
6. Integration.
"Why isn't it just live geometry?"
This is an unfortunate side-effect of the way the Rhino SDK was designed. Pumping all my geometry through the Rhino document would severely impact performance and memory usage. It also complicates the matter to an almost impossible degree as any command and plugin running in Rhino now has access to 'my' geometry.
"Maybe add more Rhino functionality to GH. GH has no 3D offset."
That's the plan moving forward. A lot of algorithms in Rhino (Make2D, FilletEdge, Shelling, BlendSrf, the list goes on) are not available as part of the public SDK. The Rhino development team is going to try and rectify this for Rhino6 and beyond. As soon as these functions become available I'll start adding them to GH (provided they make sense of course).
On the whole I agree that integration needs a lot of work, and it's work that has to happen on both sides of the isle.
You work for McNeel yet you seem to speak of them as a separate entity. Is this to say that there are technical reasons GH can only access things through the Rhino SDK? I’d think you would have complete access to all Rhino API’s. I hope it’s not a fiefdom issue, but it happens.
7. Documentation.
Absolutely. Development for GH1 has slowed because I'm now working on GH2. We decided that GH1 is 'feature complete', basically to avoid feature creep. GH2 is a ground-up rewrite so it will take a long time until something is ready for testing. During this time, minor additions and of course bug fixes will be available for GH1, but on a much lower frequency.
Documentation is woefully inadequate at present. The primer is being updated (and the new version looks great), but for GH2 we're planning a completely new help system. People have been hired to provide the content. With a bit of luck and a lot of work this will be one of the main selling points of GH2.
It begs the question that I have to ask. When is GH1.0 scheduled to launch? And if you need another person to proofread the current draft of new primer.
patrick@girgen.com
I can’t believe wikipedia has an entry for feature creep. And I can’t believe you included it. It made me giggle. Thanks.
8. 2D-ness.
"I know you'll disagree completely, but I'm sticking to this. How else could an omission like offsetsurf happen?"
I don't fully disagree. A lot of geometry is either flat or happens inside surfaces. The reason there's no shelling (I'm assuming that's what you meant, there are two Offset Surface components in GH) is because (a) it's a very new feature in Rhino and doesn't work too well yet and (b) as a result of that isn't available to plugins.
I believe it’s been helpful for me to have figured this out. I recently completed a GH course at a local Community College and have done a bunch of online tutorials. The first real project I decided to tackle has turned out to be one of the more difficult things to try. It’s the source of the questions I posted. (Thanks for pointing out that they were posted in the wrong spot. I re-posted to the discussions board.)
I just can't seem to figure out how to turn the voronoi into legitimate geometry. I've seen this exact question posted a few times, but it’s never been successfully answered. What I'm showing here is far more angular than I’m hoping for. The mesh is too fine for weaverbird to have much of an effect. And I haven't cracked re-meshing. Btw, in product design, meshes are to be avoided like the plague. Embracing them remains difficult.
As for offsetsurf, in Rhino, if you do an offsetsurf to a solid body, it executes it on all sides creating another neatly trimmed body thats either larger or smaller than the original. This is how every other app I know of works. GH’s offsetsurf creates a bunch of unjoined faces spaced away from the original brep. A common technique for 3D voronois (Yes, I hit the voronoi overuse easter egg) is to find the center of each cell and scale them by this center. If you think about it, this creates a different distance from the face of the scaled cell to the face of the original cell for every face. As I've mentioned, this project is giving me serious headaches.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the feedback, I really do, but I want to be honest and open about my own plans and where they might conflict with your wishes. Grasshopper is being used far beyond the boundaries of what we expected and it's clear that there are major shortcomings that must be addressed before too long. We didn't get it right with the first version, I don't expect we'll get it completely right with the second version but if we can improve upon the -say- five biggest drawbacks (performance, documentation, organisation, plugin management and no mac version) I'll be a happy puppy.
--
David Rutten
Thank you for taking the time to reply David. Often we feel that posting such things is send it into the empty ether. I’m very glad that this was not the case.
And thank you for all of the work you've put into GH. If you found any of my input overly harsh or ill-mannered, I apologise. It was not my intent. I'm generally not the ranting sort. If I hadn't intended to provide possibly useful input, I wouldn't have written.
Cheers
Patrick Girgen
Ps. Any pointers on how to get a bit further on the above project would be greatly appreciated.
…
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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n be obtained for curved NURBS surfaces as well as unconventional window configurations".
And I also noticed the following information form the optional input in the runEnergySimulation component.
"meshSettings_: Optional mesh settings for your geometry from any one of the native Grasshopper mesh setting components. These will be used to change the meshing of curved surfaces before they are run through EnergyPlus (note that meshing of curved surfaces is done since Energyplus is not able to calculate heat flow through non-planar surfaces). Default Grasshopper meshing is used if nothing is input here but you may want to decrease your calculation time by changing it to Coarse or increase your curvature definition (and calculation time) by making it finer".
1) My case is an one-story, rectangular-plan large hall (40m*70m*25m) with a curved roof. The roof surface is a part of a standard sphere and the walls and floor are all planar (the each wall has one curved edge as showed in the image).
For testing, I threw the original curved roof surface into daylight and energy simulations without making customized meshings, because I assumed that it might be automatically converted to meshs by Honeybee - Am I right? As showed in the image, how can I reduce the number of meshs in a proper way? Must two connected surfaces (i.e. wall and roof) be STRICTLY/SEAMLESSLY connected or not (considering different divisions of meshs in the respective surface)? - Is a connection tolerance allowed?
2) But, when I run the annual daylight simulation for this case, it gave me a lot of warnings "oconv: warning - zero area for polygon".- is that normal? and how to avoid this? Does the daylight simulation allow "curved NURBS surfaces"?
3) Moreover, when I run an energy simulation for this case, it costed extremely long time. It was just so long that I did not even have results out of one simulation. - I guessed it might be the problem caused by the curved roof surface (or automatic meshing?), but I don't have experience of converting a curved NURBS/spheral surface into correct meshs that can be recognized by Honeybee simulations (Daylight and Energy) in a proper way.
4) The large window on the wall was generated by the "_glzRatio". But the automatically generated wall meshs around this window are just too "fine", which might largely increase simulation time. Is there a proper way to get rid of it? (Considering that the size, shape and position of the window will have large influence on the daylight distribution in the building, it is worthy to keep the size, shape and position of the window as it should be in reality).
In sum, considering all above, could your please provide me some suggestions/tutorials/links that might be helpful for dealing with "curved NURBS surfaces" in Honeybee simulations.
Thank you all in advance!
Best,
Ding
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erning how to do that on a sphere.
So I know already all the different approches of how to get a relaxed voronoi pattern on a free-form open surface, but still don't know how to obtain the same elegant effect on a sphere (or an ellipsoid closed surface, whatever), or how to relax the facet dome cells.
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 the cells of which have been planarized later on, 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) on a sphere
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's 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-releasedgroupUrl=kangaroo&x=1&groupId=2985220%3AGroup%3A120977&id=2985220%3ATopic%3A972434&page=2#comments
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: How to keep the cells planar in order to be able to loft them later, obtain those pyramidal forms, and assemble easily
Have you got any ideas? Or maybe there's a completely different approach to that?
Cheers, and thanks in advance…