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.…
r." I'm sorry to hear that, I take the interface and ease-of-use rather seriously so this sounds like 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."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."[...] 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.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'.
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.
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 this time around 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.
Sliders."I think they should be optional."They are optional."The “N” should turn into the number if set."What if you assign more than one integer? I think I'd rather see a component with inputs 'N', 'P' and 'X' rather than '5', '8' and '35.7', but I concede that is a personal preference."But if I plug it into something that'll only accept a 1, a 2, or a 3, that slider should self set accordingly."Agreed.
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."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.
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.
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.
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.
Organisation.Agreed. We need to come up with better ways to organise, document, version, share and simplify GH files. GH1 UI is ok for small projects (<100 components) but can't handle more complexity.
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
david@mcneel.com…
ve Intermediate Insight of Computational Design Strategies While Exploring Rangoli Art form in 2 Dimension and 3Dimesion in which Participants will not only be trained to Digitally Design using Parametric software's but they will also be trained to Fabricate them in reality.
This Course will be explored in manner where Participants will understand inter-dependency of Rhinoceros3D & Grasshoper3D through a unique Hybrid Teaching Method While Exploring Rangoli Geometry .
The course will also take participants through Topics such as - Computational Thinking, - Computational / Parametric Design, - Computational Rangoli Exploration, - Digital Fabrication, - 3D Visualization ( Rhino3D 6), - Making Info-graphics & Design Diagrams ( Rhino3d 6 ).
Participants will also be doing a Project at the last Leg of Workshop in which they will implement the skill they gained in first Few Weeks.
{ Tutor } Nitant Pixelkar (Computational Artist / Designer, Mumbai)
Nitant Hirlekar A.k.a. Pixelkar, is a Computational Artist. He graduated from Rachana Sansad school of Interior Design 2011, Mumbai. In Academics He Bagged Two Gold and One Silver Medal on National Level.
In his post academic days, he came across the Emerging Computational Techniques in Design industry in which Algorithm serves as a main Functional part. He uses Algorithms to Deconstruct the Captured images in Pixelated form using the Grid of the Desired Indian Art Forms.
He Heads Collective Group Named "Mutation Lab” which is a multidisciplinary Design & Art Cell. Where they Explore Computational Approach while Designing Various Scales Spatial Installation, Digital Fabrication, Interactive Installations and Computational Consultancy for Various Architects.
He has exhibited his first artwork in Kalaghoda Arts Festival for in 2014 And further in 2016 and 2017.In 2015 he exhibited in Dharavi Biennale” organized by Wellcome Trust,London & Sneha Organisation, Mumbai Which was internationally acclaimed. In 2016 he got Featured on a TV show - The Creative Indian's as an Absolut Creative Indian of the Week.
Academically he is been involved in Many Computational Design Workshops / Elective Studios for School of Interior Design (Rachna Sansad), LS Raheja College of Architecture & Rat-Lab (Delhi).
{ Participants } The Course is aimed at Architecture, Interior Design, Product Design,Furniture Design & Fashion Design Students and Professionals. However we would be thrilled to have any Interdisciplinary Artist / Creator/ Maker to join the Course as well.
{ Level }
Intermediate
{ Timing } Monday To Friday - 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (15 Hours/ Week = 5 Week X 15 Hours = 75 Hours )
{ Dates } Registration Ends - 24th April 2020 **Subejct to Availablity
{ Workshop Dates } 4th May 2020 To 5th June 2020
{ Venue } Lower Parel,Mumbai ( Details To Be Announced )
{ Schedule }
{Registration Form}…
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).
…
xes as well.
If you want to jump straight in, you can download the latest build from the Firefly website or from Food4Rhino project page. Or, if you'd rather learn more about all the new features, keep reading!
Improved Arduino Support The Firefly Firmata (Arduino Sketch) has gone through a massive overhaul - making it much more compact, efficient, and extensible. The sketch is now just over 230 lines of code (compared to more than 500 in the previous version). But more importantly, the firmata is now more extensible; making it easier to add support for new Arduino boards... Like what you ask? Well, support for the new Arduino Due platform for example. The Arduino Due is an advanced board and while it may look similar to the Arduino Mega... it's actually quite different under the hood. It features an ARM Cortex-M3 CPU which means its really fast. It also features 12-bit analog resolution for reading and writing (which is pretty awesome). As I said, the Due is a more advanced board and it does require some caution when getting started. You can find out more about the Due platform at the Arduino Due Getting Started page.
One of the biggest changes with the revision of the Firmata was that it required some structural changes with how the data is sent/received from Grasshopper. So, if you are planning on using the latest version of the Firmata, you'll need to also have the latest Firefly components installed as well. This shouldn't be an issue because the installer will place the new Firefly Firmata in your sketchbook folder and install the new components as well... but it's worth noting so you don't try to mix and match the versions.
Kinect Version 2 Support Earlier this summer, Microsoft released a new and improved version of its popular Kinect motion tracking sensor. The sensor includes better body, hand, and joint orientation, 1080p color video (1920x1080), depth video (512x424), and a new active infrared video (512x424). The sensor now has the capability to track up to 6 people at once (compared to only two people with the previous version).
This build of Firefly now comes with three new components to work with this new sensor. The Video Stream can access the color, depth, and infrared video streams at different resolutions. Simply right-click on the video component to choose the video feed and resolution. Note: You may need to update your graphics card in order to get the infrared video stream to work properly (at least I did before it began working properly). The Skeleton Tracker is similar to the previous version, but can now track up to 6 people. And the Mesh Reconstruction component will build a fully colored 3D mesh using the color and depth data from the sensor. I plan to add more components to this section soon, but I wanted to go ahead and release this so more people could use it! [EDIT: I would like to thank Panagiotis Michalatos for his collaboration in the development of the Kinect V2 tools].
New Computer Vision Tools This release also includes a number of new computer vision tools. One component to note is the Bitmap Tracer, which can be seen in action here. The Bitmap Tracer component spawns a number of randomly generated particles which trace the edges of a bitmap using the nearest contouring vector. Another pair of components is the Bitmap Decompose/Recompose which can either decompose or reconstruct a bitmap using a list of values for its constituent channels. These two can be used together to swap channels in an image (think chroma keying). There's also a Bitmap Threshold component which uses the average dithering algorithm to find the color quantization of an image. Lastly, I've updated the Leap Motion Finger Tracking component to work with the latest release of the Leap v2.2.1 software release. The component now has improved finger tracking including joint and bone position/orientation.
In addition to these new features, there's also a number of bug fixes too (check out the readme if your interested). As always, I welcome any and all feedback on this build. Your support really helps, so please let me know what you think!…