an run. GH2 still uses the Rhino SDK for the geometry functionality, so curve offsets, meshing, brep intersections etc. will run exactly as fast as they do now.
However even in the absence of a working version of GH2 which can be profiled, we can still discuss some of the major aspects of performance:
Preview display. Each GH solution involves a redraw of all the Rhino viewports at the end (unless is preview is switched off, which I imagine is exceedingly rare). For simple GH files, the viewport redraw takes far more time than the solution. Rhino6 has a completely rewritten display pipeline using more modern APIs so we should see a speed-up here in the future, be it GH1 or GH2 or GHx.
Canvas display. Each GH solution involves a redraw of the Grasshopper canvas. If the canvas shows a lot of bitmaps or intricate geometry (lots or text, dense graphs, etc.) this can take a significant amount of time. GH2 will use Eto instead of GDI+ as a UI platform. Eto can be both faster and slower than GDI, depending on what's being drawn. It is particularly fast when drawing images, not so much when drawing lots of lines. There is a little room for improvement here and I intend to take full advantage of that.
Preview meshing. Grasshopper uses standard Rhino mesher to generate preview meshes. If a GH file generates lots of breps, a large amount of time will be required to create the preview meshes. The new display improvements in Rhino6 will allow us to get away with previewing some types of geometry without the need to mesh them first, and I imagine some effort will be spend in the near future to improve the Rhino mesher as well.
Data casting. Most component code operates on standard framework and RhinoCommon types (bool, int, string, Point3d, Curve, Brep, ...), however Grasshopper stores and transfers data wrapped up in IGH_Goo derived types. This means that every time a component 'does it's thing', data needs to be converted from one type into another, and then back again. This involves type-checking and often type instantiation. This stuff is fast, but it's overhead nonetheless and can take significant amount of processor cycles when there's lots of data. GH2 no longer does this, it stores and transfers the types directly as they are. There will still be some overhead left, but hopefully a lot less.
Computation. GH1 is a single-threaded application. When a component operates on a large collection of data, each iteration waits for the next. GH2 will be parallel, meaning components will be invoked on multiple threads, each thread focusing only on part of the data. Then all the results need to be merged back into a single data tree. On my 8-core machine (4 physical cores, each with 2 logical cores) I've been getting performance speed-ups of 4~6 times when using my multi-threading code. I wish it was 8, but clearly there is some overhead involved here as well.This will not help to speed up a single very complicated solid boolean operation, but if you're offsetting 800 curves, then each thread can be assigned 100 curves and the time it takes will set by whatever thread takes the longest.
Algorithms. If a specific component is slow, there may be things we can do to speed it up. Either improve the Rhino SDK, or improve the GH code. Depends on the component in question.
When all's said and done, I'd love to see a 10x speed increase for GH2 over GH1 for simplish stuff, and I shall get very cross if it's anything less than 5x.…
oftware connections built from the initial seed of the project. 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.
This release is also special since today it is just about 3 years (3 years and 2 weeks) from the first release of Ladybug. As with any release, there have been a number of bug fixes and improvements but we also have some major news this time. In no specific order and to ensure that the biggest developments do not get lost in the extensive list of updates, here are the major ones:
Mostapha is re-writing Ladybug!
Ladybug for DynamoBIM is finally available.
Chris made bakeIt really useful by incorporating an export pathway to PDFs and vector-based programs.
Honeybee is now connected to THERM and the LBNL suite thanks to Chris Mackey.
Sarith has addressed a much-desired wish for Honeybee (Hi Theodore!) by adding components to model electric lighting with Radiance.
Djordje is on his way to making renewable energy deeply integrated with Ladybug by releasing components for modeling solar hot water.
There is new bug. Check the bottom of the post for Dragonfly!
Last but definitely not least (in case you’re not still convinced that this release is a major one) Miguel has started a new project that brings some of Ladybug’s features directly to Rhino. We mean Rhino Rhino - A Rhino plugin! Say hi to Icarus! #surprise
Before we forget! Ladybug and Honeybee now have official stickers. Yes! We know about T-Shirts and mugs and they will be next. For now, you can deck-out your laptops and powerhouse simulation machines with the symbology of our collaborative software ecosystem.
Now go grab a cup of tea/coffee and read the details below:
Rewriting Ladybug!
Perhaps the most far-reaching development of the last 4 months is an effort on the part of Mostapha to initiate a well structured, well documented, flexible, and extendable version of the Ladybug libraries. While such code is something that few community members will interact with directly, a well-documented library is critical for maintaining the project, adding new features, and for porting Ladybug to other software platforms.
The new Ladybug libraries are still under development across a number of new repositories and they separate a ladybug-core, which includes epw parsing and all non-geometric functions, from interface-specific geometry libraries. This allows us to easily extend Ladybug to other platforms with a different geometry library for each platform (ie. ladybug-grasshopper, ladybug-dynamo, ladybug-web, etc) all of which are developed on top of the ladybug-core.
Without getting too technical, here is an example of a useful outcome of this development. If you want to know the number of hours that relative humidity is more than 90% for a given epw, all that you have to code (in any python interface) is the following:
import ladybug as lb
_epwFile = r"C:\EnergyPlusV7-2-0\WeatherData\USA_CO_Golden-NREL.724666_TMY3.epw"
epwfile = lb.epw.EPW(_epwFile)
filteredData = epwfile.relativeHumidity.filterByConditionalStatement('x>90')
print "Number of hours with Humidity more than 90 is %d "%len(filteredData.timeStamps)
Compare that to the 500 + lines that you would have had to write previously for this operation, which were usually tied to a single interface! Now let’s see what will happen if you want to use the geometry-specific libraries. Let’s draw a sunpath in Grasshopper:
import ladybuggrasshopper.epw as epw
import ladybuggrasshopper.sunpath as sunpath
# get location data form epw file
location = epw.EPW(_epwFile).location
# initiate sunpath based on location
sp = sunpath.Sunpath.fromLocation(location, northAngle = 0, daylightSavingPeriod = None, basePoint =cenPt, scale = scale, sunScale = sunScale)
# draw sunpath geometry
sp.drawAnnualSunpath()
# assign geometries to outputs
...
Finally we ask, how would this code will look if we wanted to make a sunpath for dynamo? Well, it will be exactly the same! Just change ladybuggrasshopper in the second line to ladybugdynamo! Here is the code which is creating the sunpath below.
With this ease of scripting, we hope to involve more of our community members in our development and make it easy for others to use ladybug in their various preferred applications. By the next release, we will produce an API documentation (documentation of all the ladybug classes, methods and properties that you can script with) and begin making tutorials for those interested in getting deeper into Ladybug development.
LADYBUG
1 - Initial Release of Ladybug for Dynamo:
As is evident from the post above, we are happy to announce the first release of Ladybug for Dynamo! You can download the ladybug package from Dynamo package manager. Make sure to download version 0.0.6 which is actually 0.0.1! It took a number of trial and errors to get it up there. Once you have the file downloaded you can watch these videos to get started:
The source code can be find under ladybug-dynamo repository and (as you can already guess) it is using the new code base. It includes a very small toolkit of essential Ladybug components/nodes but it has enough to get you started. You can import weather files, draw sunpaths and run sunlighthours or radiation analyses.
There are two known issues in this release but neither of them is critical. You need to have Dynamo 0.9.1 or higher installed which you can download from here (http://dynamobuilds.com/). It is recommended that you run the scripts with ‘Manual’ run (as opposed to ‘Automatic’) since the more intense calculations can make Dynamo crash in automatic mode.
To put things in perspective, here is how we would map Ladybug for Dynamo vs Ladybug and Honeybee for Grasshopper on the classic ‘Hype graph’. The good news is that what we learned a lot from the last three years, making development of the Dynamo version easier and getting us to the plateau of productivity faster.
We should also note that the current development of the Dynamo interface is behind that of the Ladybug-Core, which means there are a number of features that are developed in the code but haven’t made their way to the nodes yet. They will be added gradually over the next month or two.
If you’re interested to get involved in the development process or have ideas for the development, follow ladybug on Facebook, Twitter and Github. We will only post major release news here. Facebook, github and twitter will be the main channels for posting the development process. There will also be a release of a new ladybug for Grasshopper soon that will use the came Ladybug-Core libraries as the Dynamo interface [Trying hard not to name it as Ladybug 2].
2 - New Project “Icarus” Provides Ladybug Capabilities Directly in Rhino
Speaking of expanded cross-platform capabilities, the talented Miguel Rus has produced a standalone Rhino Plugin off of the original Ladybug code that has been included in this release. After writing his own core C# libraries, Miguel’s plugin enables users to produce sunpath and run sunlight hours analyses in the Rhino scene without need of opening Grasshopper or engaging the (sometimes daunting) act of visual scripting.
This release includes his initial RHP plugin file. It is hoped that Miguel’s efforts will extend some of the capabilities of environmental design to individuals who are unfamiliar with visual scripting, casting the network of our community into new territory. We need your help spreading the word about Icarus since the people who will benefit the most from it have probably not read this far into the release notes. Also, as the project is in the early stages, your feedback can make a great difference. You can download the current release from this link.
Once you download the zip file. Right click and unblock it. Then extract the files under C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5 (64-bit)\Plug-ins\ folder. Drag and drop the RHP file into Rhino and you should be ready to go. You can either type Icarus in the command line or open it via the panels. Here is a short video that shows how to run a sunlighhours analysis study in Rhino.
3 - BakeIt Input Now Supports a Pathway to PDF +Vector Programs
As promised in the previous release, the BakeIt_ option available on Ladybug’s visual components has been enhanced to provide a full pathway to vector-based programs (like Illustrator and Inkscape) and eases the export to vector formats like PDFs.
This means that the BakeIt_ operation now places all text in the Rhino scene as actual editable text (not meshes) and any colored meshes are output as groups of colored hatches (so that they appear as color-filled polygons in vector-based programs). There is still an option to bake the colored geometries as light meshes (which requires smaller amounts of memory and computation time) but the new hatched capability should make it easier to incorporate Ladybug graphics in architectural drawings and documents like this vector psychrometric chart.
4 - Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) Now Available
Thanks to the efforts of Djordje Spasic, it is now possible to compute the common outdoor comfort metric ‘Physiological Equivalent Temperature’ (PET) with Ladybug. The capability has been included with this release of “Thermal Comfort Indices” component and is supported by a “Body Characteristics” component in the Extra tab. PET is particularly helpful for evaluating outdoor comfort at a high spatial resolution and so the next Honeybee release will include an option for PET with the microclimate map workflow.
5 - Solar Hot Water Components Available in WIP
Chengchu Yan and Djordje Spasic have built a set of components that perform detailed estimates of solar hot water. The components are currently undergoing final stages of testing and are available in the WIP tab of this release. You can read the full release notes for the components here.
6 - New Ladybug Graphic Standards
With the parallel efforts or so many developers, we have made an effort in this release to standardize the means by which you interact with the components. This includes warnings for missing inputs and the ability to make either icons or text appear on the components as you wish (Hi Andres!). A full list of all graphic standards can be found here. If you have any thoughts or comments on the new standards, feel free to voice them here.
7 - Wet Bulb Temperature Now Available
Thanks to Antonello Di Nunzio - the newest member of the Ladybug development team, it is now possible to calculate wet bulb temperature with Ladybug. Antonello’s component can be found under the WIP tab and takes inputs of dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure.
8 - New View Analysis Types
The view analysis component now allows for several different view studies in addition to the previous ‘view to test points.’ These include, skyview (which is helpful for studies of outdoor micro-climate), as well as spherical view and ‘cone of vision’ view, which are helpful for indoor studies evaluating the overall visual connection to the outdoors.
HONEYBEE
1 - Connection to THERM and LBNL Programs
With this release, many of you will notice that a new tab has been added to Honeybee. The tab “11 | THERM” includes 7 new components that enable you to export ready-to-simulate Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) THERM files from Rhino/Grasshopper. THERM is a 2D finite element heat flow engine that is used to evaluate the performance of wall/window construction details by simulating thermal bridging behavior. The new Honeybee tab represents the first ever CAD plugin interface for THERM, which has been in demand since the first release of LBNL THERM several years ago. The export workflow involves the drawing of window/wall construction details in Rhino and the assigning of materials and boundary conditions in Grasshopper to produce ready-to-simulate THERM files that allow you to bypass the limited drawing interface of THERM completely. Additional components in the “11 | THERM” tab allow you to import the results of THERM simulations back into Grasshopper and assist with incorporating THERM results into Honeybee EnergyPlus simulations. Finally, two components assist with a connection to LBNL WINDOW for advanced modeling of Glazing constructions. Example files illustrating many of the capabilities of the new components can be found in there links.
THERM_Export_Workflow, THERM_Comparison_of_Stud_Wall_Constructions
Analyze_THERM_Results, Thermal_Bridging_with_THERM_and_EnergyPlus
Import_Glazing_System_from_LBNL_WINDOW, Import_LBNL_WINDOW_Glazing_Assembly_for_EnergyPlus
It is recommended that those who are using these THERM components for the first time begin by exploring this example file.
Tutorial videos on how to use the components will be posted soon. A great deal of thanks is due to the LBNL team that was responsive to questions at the start of the development and special thanks goes to Payette Architects, which allowed Chris Mackey (the author of the components) a significant amount of paid time to develop them.
2 - Electrical Lighting Components with Enhanced Capabilities for Importing and Manipulating IES Files
Thanks to the efforts of Sarith Subramaniam, it is now much easier and more flexible to include electric lighting in Honeybee Radiance simulations. A series of very exciting images and videos can be found in his release post.
You can find the components under WIP tab. Sarith is looking for feedback and wishes. Please give them a try and let him know your thoughts. Several example files showing how to use the components can be found here. 1, 2, 3.
3- Expanded Dynamic Shade Capabilities
After great demand, it is now possible to assign several different types of control strategies for interior blinds and shades for EnergyPlus simulations. Control thresholds range from zone temperature, to zone cooling load, to radiation on windows, to many combinations of these variables. The new component also features the ability to run EnergyPlus simulations with electrochromic glazing. An example file showing many of the new capabilities can be found here.
Dragonfly Beta
In order to link the capabilities of Ladybug + Honeybee to a wider range of climatic data sets and analytical tools, a new insect has been initiated under the name of Dragonfly. While the Dragonfly components are not included with the download of this release, the most recent version can be downloaded here. An example file showing how to use Dragonfly to warp EPW data to account for urban heat island effect can also be found here. By the next release, the capabilities of Dragonfly should be robust enough for it to fly on its own. Additional features that will be implemented in the next few months include importing thermal satellite image data to Rhino/GH as well as the ability to warp EPW files to account for climate change projections. Anyone interested in testing out the new insect should feel free to contact Chris Mackey.
And finally, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Sarith and Antonello to the team. As mentioned in the above release notes, Sarith has added a robust implementation for electric light modeling with Honeybee and Antonello has added a component to calculate wet bulb temperature while providing stellar support to a number of people here on the GH forum.
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.
Enjoy!
Ladybug+Honeybee development team
PS: Special thanks to Chris for writing most of the release notes!…
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!…
h tubes are redundant so surfaces overlap instead of interpenetrate, so it is not a good system.
Cocoon is the best answer these days unless you can get Exowire/Exoskelton to work. If you want more control over shape, feed your uncapped tubes into Cocoon as meta-surfaces and delete any and all of the inner meshes to just keep the outer single closed one, but this is just duplicate-culled lines used as meta-lines:
Turn down the CS input to 0.005 for this result, from 0.02 used for faster preview. In fact bake the lines and only test Cocoon on a few of them in order to get the result you want before doing the whole thing.
Whole thing at 0.005 cell size takes 5 minutes for Cocoon and 2 minutes for refinement to a smooth and even mesh.
Actually, seems like 0.005 is way too fine, giving a 600MB STL file.
So, 0.01 cell size at less than a minute total:
159MB STL which is still a bit too big for places like Shapeways. Wow. OK then 0.02 cell size, but I have to increase diameter or my two smoothing steps in refine collapse things too much, an in fact I set it to no smoothing, getting more volume and a reasonable 46MB STL file:
Alas, now it's more frail and overly organic rather than mechanical. Increasing diameter just merges it into perforated plates too much. File size is simply an issue with this complexity level, so different 3D printing services will have different file size limits.
Exowire/Exoskeleton would work but your original mesh hasn't been MeshMachine remeshed to be regular, so short segments ruin it. Here is just a corner:
I think that's why more wires fails, at least. Pretty temperamental component.
Switching to MeshMachine is needed, I guess, instead of Cocoon refine, to remesh away so many small triangles along the boring tubes. Crucial for good remeshing was to set Flip to 0 or I failed to get a rough enough mesh.
It's an adaptive mesh so I can retain good detail while roughing out the tubes.
MeshMachine is terribly slow for this whole thing, like 6 minutes, and blows up for this overly rough setting, 20 steps, so less rough, ugh, I'm out of time. I think free Autocad Meshmixer is the way to make a better smaller mesh, after a refined output from Cocoon. MeshMachine is just too slow to tweak and when it blows up, creating massive triangles jutting out, it hangs too when you change settings.
Starting with a Cocoon refined mesh certainly helped Meshmixer. Using triangle budget lets me have full control. Here is 150K triangles instead of 200K:
STL file size down to 40MB. I think Shapeways is 70 or 100MB limit? So it can be even finer. Here is the Cocoon output versus the Meshmixer reduction:
To use Meshmixer, turn on View > Show Wireframe, Command-S to select all and use Edit > Reduce from the palette that appears.
Cocoon can end up making a few inner meshes where things get weird in your uneven original mesh with small holes so fish out the main mesh by adding a List Item node.
The best strategy for Cocoon is indeed to make an overly fine STL so you avoid any need to tweak forever in Grasshopper, but then you can achieve a smaller mesh file size while preserving shape instead of things turning all smearly organic in Grasshopper.…
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).
…
mpiled. The six potential sources are:
Primitive types such as Booleans, Integers, Colors, Strings, etc. Grasshopper uses these types itself a lot.
Other .NET Framework types such as System.Drawing.PointF or System.Collections.Generic.HashSet<T>. Grasshopper does not use these types to during component <-> component communication, but someone else might.
RhinoCommon types such as Point3d, Circle, Plane, Brep, Curve etc. Many of these are used natively, but certainly not all of them.
Types defined in Grasshopper itself.
Types defined in plug-ins for Grasshopper.
Types defined in VB/C#/Python scripts that run inside Grasshopper.
Although clearly some of these are known to the developer during the time of writing, not all of them can be. Yet Grasshopper still needs to be able to interpret and use types it may know nothing about. Some of the things Grasshopper needs to be able to do with data of any type are:
Convert it to text so tooltips and panels can be populated with useful descriptions of data.
Convert it to and from other types.
Duplicate data so we can change it without affecting the original.
Test data for validity.
Save types to *.gh files and load them back in. (note: this works especially poorly at the moment.)
Preview geometric types in the viewport.
Bake geometric types to the Rhino document.
Transform geometric types.
Calculate bounding boxes of geometric types.
Be able to store null states of each type.
To overcome the problem of (A) needing to do so many things while (B) knowing nothing about the types in advance an interface is defined in the Grasshopper SDK and all data which is stored inside parameters must implement this interface. This allows GH to do the things from the second list to all the types from the first list.
The IGH_Goo interface is is usually nothing more than a wrapper around the actual data which provides a bunch of functionality for whatever it wraps. For example take the primitive Boolean (or bool in C#). It's a structure so it can never be null, and it can only exist in either a true or a false state.
GH uses booleans a lot so it provides an IGH_Goo implementation for Boolean. This wrapper class tells GH that a boolean value can be converted into an integer (false -> 0, true -> 1), into a colour (false -> black, true -> white), into a string (false -> "false", true -> "true) and so on. The wrapper class also knows how to write and read boolean values to and from *.gh files, and because we're now dealing with a wrapper class we can have null instances in a collection of boolean values. The wrapper doesn't tell GH how to preview or bake booleans, because booleans are not a geometric type of data.
Because so many data types are not in any way geometric, there is a second interface called IGH_GeometricGoo which extends IGH_Goo with stuff like transforming, bounding-boxing etc.
Almost always component developers and scripters can ignore any of the IGH_Goo types, because they are mostly used for internal bookkeeping. However sometimes a developer will either want to access the functionality that goo provides or they wish to inject a new, previously unknown type of data into a Grasshopper file. In these cases some knowledge of IGH_Goo and its derived interface and classes is required.…
Added by David Rutten at 10:29am on August 11, 2016
e chosen to dive into Grasshopper. I’m about 6 months in. If some of my comments are completely off, please take that to mean that a feature is too inaccessible to a newish user rather that it’s just missing, as I may have stated.
One of my primary pain points is this. Things that can be done in other programs are invariably easier in other programs. This is a big enough issue that I doubt there’s an easy solution that an armchair qb like myself can offer up.
The interface:
I’ve used a lot of 3D programs. I’ve never encountered one as difficult as grasshopper. 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. Yet PTC (Parametric Technology Corp.) has been doing parametric design software since 1985 and has a far cleaner and more intuitive interface. So does SolidWorks, Inventor, CATIA, NX, and a bunch of others.
In the early 2000's, when parametric design software was all the rage, McNeel stated quite strongly the Rhino would remain a direct modeler and would not become a parametric modeler. Trends come. Trends go. And the industry has been swinging back to direct modeling. So McNeel’s decision was probably ok. But I have to wonder if part of McNeel’s reluctance to incorporate some of the tried and proven ideas of other parametric packages doesn't have roots in their earlier declaration to not incorporate parametrics.
A Visual Programming Language:
I read a lot about the awesomeness and flexibility of Grasshopper being a visual programming language. Let’s be clear, this is DOS era speak. I believe GH should continue to have the ability to be extended and massaged with code, as most design programs do. But as long as this is front and center, GH will remain out of reach to the average designer.
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.
Sliders:
I hate sliders. I understand them, but I hate ‘em. I think they should be optional. Ya, I know I can r-click on the N of a component and set the integer. It’s a pain, and it gives no feedback. The “N” should turn into the number if set. AAAnd, sliders should be context sensitive. I like that the name of a slider changes when I plug it into something. But if I plug it into something that'll only accept a 1, a 2, or a 3, that slider should self set accordingly. I shouldn't be able to plug in a “50” and have everything after turn red.
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.
And this item I’m guessing on. I’m not yet good enough at GH to know if this may have adverse effects. Reverse, Flatten, Graft, etc.; could these be context sensitive? Could some of these items disappear if they are contextually inappropriate or gray out if they're unlikely?
Tighter integration with Rhino:
I'm not entirely certain what this would look like. Currently my work flow entails baking, making a few Rhino edits, and reinserting into GH. I question the whole baking thing, btw. Why isn't it just live geometry? That’s how other parametric apps work. Maybe add more Rhino functionality to GH. GH has no 3D offset. I have to bake, offsetserf, and reinsert the geometry. I’m currently looking at the “Geometry Cache” and “Geometry Pipeline” components to see if they help. But I haven't been able to figure it out. Which leads me to:
Update all of the documentation:
I'm guessing this is an in process thing and you're working toward rolling GH from 0.9.00075 to 1.0. GH was being updated nearly weekly earlier this year. Then it suddenly stopped. If we're talking weeks before a full release, so be it. But if we're looking at something longer, a documentation update would help a lot. Geometry Cache and Geometry Pipeline’s help still read “This is the autogenerated help topic for this object. Developers: override the HtmlHelp_Source() function in the base class to provide custom help.” This does not help. And the Grasshopper Primer 2nd Ed. was written for GH 0.60007.
Grasshopper is fundamentally a 2D program:
I know you'll disagree completely, but I'm sticking to this. How else could an omission like offsetsurf happen? Pretty much every 3D program in existence has this. I’m sure I can probably figure out how to deconstruct the breps, join the curves, loft, trim, and so forth. But does writing an algorithm to do what all other 3D programs do with a dialog box seem reasonable? I'm sure if you go command by command you'll find a ton on such things.
If you look at the vast majority of things done in GH, you'll note that they're mostly either flat or a fundamentally 2D pattern on a warped surface.
I've been working on a part that is a 3D voronoi trimmed to a 3D model. I've been trying to turn the trimmed voronoi into legitimate geometry for over a month without success.
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/question-voronoi-3d-continued
I’ve researched it enough to have found many others have had the exact same problem and have not solved it. It’s really not that conceptually difficult. But GH lacks the tools.
Make screen organization easier:
I have a touch of OCD, and I like my GH layout to flow neatly. Allow input/output nodes to be re-ordered. This will allow a reduction in crossed wires. Make the wire positions a bit more editable. I sometimes use a geometry component as a wire anchor to clean things up. Being able to grab a wire and pull it out of the way would be kinda nice.
I think GH has some awesome abilities. I also think accessing those abilities could be significantly easier.
~p…
mers considering extreme sports reject mainstream retailers and like to check out small stores rather of at chains plus malls. Several smaller retailers discuss trends in sports shoe sales. http://skateszone.com/
Though athletic shoes and sports stores and from doorways retailers have reported somewhat uptick in footwear sales due to the increase in extreme sports, the particular beneficiaries inside the trend are independent surf and skate niche stores.
Some West Coast surf and skate shops stated teenagers and even more youthful Generation Xers are not only rejecting traditional sports, but they're also shunning mainstream retailers and malls meant for smaller niche shops transporting hard-to-come-by brands.
Eddie Miyoshi, district manager at Atomic Garage, a 3-store chain situated in Gardena, Calif., stated the soaring recognition of skateboard footwear has boosted the retailer's total footwear business 20-thirty percent this year, rather of '95.
Skate footwear presently represent 80-90 % of Atomic Garage's shoe sales, while couple of years back, Dr. Martens and Timberland drove the retailer's footwear business.
Like many retailers, Miyoshi pointed to Airwalk since the trend's catalyst.
However, if Airwalk broadened its distribution to larger chains, which are frequently located in malls, only a few skate shoe customers adopted. Rather, many youthful males have switched for your skate shops for additional elusive brands like Etnies, Duffs, and Electricity Footwear by Circus. By refusing to market bigger retailers or sports stores, these brands are increasing their cachet among youthful consumers.
"Kids don't want stuff which have been within the shops,In . Miyoshi added.
Searching ahead, Miyoshi forecasted skate shoe sales will remain strong through spring '97 provided "the [hot] vendors don't auction other [non-particularly shop] retailers."
"Skaters and non-skaters are rebelling against mainstream retailers so on to surf and skate shops for many looks," echoed Mark Richards, co-online sources Val Surf, a 3-store chain situated in North Hollywood, Calif. Soaring sales of skate footwear have driven total footwear receipts up 25 percent this year rather of '95.
"The quantity of that increase might be connected while using exposure of maximum games? I am unsure. [Skate footwear] may also be actually the think about the moment,In . Richards acknowledged. And in relation to getting this right look, youthful customers can be very picky.
"Skateboard footwear is a huge category for people, but we're not able to own the brands, Etnies, Duffs, Electricity and Nice, simply because they won't sell us," stated Mark Anderson, buyer at Chick's Sports, a six-store chain in Covina, Calif. "We have people coming every single day requesting them." Consequently, skate footwear have consistently ongoing to obtain about 5 % of Chick's overall footwear business. http://skateszone.com/the-top-8-best-skateboards-for-beginners-reviews-2017/
Nonetheless, some outdoors, niche sports and sports retailers are noting the growing recognition and coverage of maximum sports will receive a modest impact on footwear sales. Trailrunning footwear and approach/outdoors crosstrainers will be the two groups benefiting the very best inside the recognition. Like the skate shoe business, some retailers realize that styling instead of function frequently drives sales of individuals footwear.
"At this time the merchandise is a lot more visual than function," stated Chet James, gm of Super Jock 'N Jill, Dallas, speaking about trailrunning footwear. Still, James noted the current hype over adventure sports helps draw more customer traffic. "The marketing campaigns and media help bring growing figures of people in, nonetheless they frequently occasions day an issue that increases results on their own account,Inch he conceded.
John Wilkinson, executive vp inside the 85-store chain Track 'N Trail, Eldorado Hillsides, Calif., stated the shop has "seen some activity in approach footwear," but he requested the amount of consumers depend in it commercially sport. And, instead of accelerating total footwear business, Wilkinson speculated elevated sales of approach footwear and trailrunners are gnawing away at traditional hiking shoe and boot volume.
But Dan Bazinet, president of Overland Exchanging, a 34-store chain situated in Westford, Mass., believes the company-new looks have breathed existence for the wilting hiking boot category. "[Approach-type footwear] don't represent the lion's participate the hiking market, nonetheless they have elevated the hiking business and provided us extra sales," Bazinet stated.
He designated Timberland's Treeline Series and Rockport's Leadville line as strong performers. Unsurprisingly, he noted the company-new looks are attractive to youthful consumer base than traditional hikers.
For that month of June, sales of men's hikers were up 49 percent at Overland, rather of June '95, while sales of women's hikers were up 17 % for that month. Bazinet also attributed elevated sales that shops walked inside the hiking business, departing that business for that specialists.
Some retailers draw a good example concerning the hiking boom of two yrs ago combined with the current extreme sport phenomenon. "Plenty of bigger chains will get a specific percent in the industry while [extreme] sports remain a fad because they are selling cost-point type gear," described Steven Carre, assistant hard goods buyer at Adventure 16, a six-store chain situated in Hillcrest.
"However individuals [true enthusiasts] will say `we need real gear' and may shown up at us. That will help us after a while. What Size Skateboard good for an 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 year old
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eventually found out about genetic algorithms on which I found extensive researches, projects,... ! I looked into it and ended up on a few papers which I believe are the jumpstart for my master thesis.
"Galapagos; on the logic and limitations of generic solvers" by David RuttenArticle in Architectural Design 83(2) March 2013
"Black-box optimisation methods for architectural design" by Thomas Wortmann and Giacomo NanniciniConference Paper: CAADRIA 2016, At Melbourne, AU, Volume: 177-186
So I started looking into alternatives to genetic algorithms in architectural design.So far, I've ended up on :
Thomas Wortmann's work with the surrogate(or model) based optimization approach!You can check out the tool he developped for GH (Opossum):http://www.food4rhino.com/app/opossum-optimization-solver-surrogate-models
Judyta Cichocka's work, specially with the Swarm approachYou can check out the tool she developped for GH (Silvereye):http://www.food4rhino.com/app/silvereye-pso-based-solver
And that's it !!! I've been researching through article references (mainly on "researchgate") but I'm now stuck in a loop of references I already visited!That probably means the litterature on the subject is not (yet) extended but I might probably be missing something.The keywords make it difficult to search : "optimisation", "algorithms", "architecture", send me most of the time to computational engineering and deep mathematics papers I unfortunately do not have the background knowledge to comprehend ! So there it is ! If you have any clue of where (or how ! ) I should be looking, please tell me :)I know Mr Rutten is pretty active on the forum so hopefully... (fingers crossed :p) !Also if you have any good tips for getting into algorithms in general (you think could help), I'd be glad to hear(read) it ! A book, tutorials maybe ?!So, autors, architects, projects books, articles, conferences I should go to,specialized architecture offices/studios (I'm also looking for an internship so ...).If you know about a more appropriate forum please let me know !If you want to get deeper into this, you can contact me at :
e1635331@student.tuwien.ac.at
tdissaux@student.ulg.ac.be
My master thesis is due for may 2018 but I have a paper to write for January 2018 in order to be elligible for a PHD program afterwards.What I mean by that is that if you read this message in 6 month, I'll still be open to discussion !
I am right now an erasmus student at TUWien (Vienna) but my main university is The university of Liège in Belgium.I can handle French, English, Italian litterature and eventually Dutch if really you think it's worth it ! I have access to most online libraries via my university's portals so access shouldn't be an issue !I'm very excited to hear from you I wish you all a great day,Cheers,Thomas
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