ooking for an efficient way to perform glazing of complex shapes.
I've only followed the Energy modelling workshops so far so i may have missed some essential components or workflows to achieve my needs. But i've made an attached definition with all my current attempts to get a proper HBzone with the numerous windows faces i will always have to deal with in this project.
I first thought that i was not using the HBObjWGZ correctly, then after some readings it was maybe an upgrading issue, then effectively i had my Therm 7.5 that needed to be reinstaled, but then ... I must be missing an essential HB tricks or workflow i guess ...
So I divided my attempt in two series :
- The Serie 1 : is a simplier version of the project step i'm working on but i'd be glad to achieve it first !
- The Serie 2 : is the real final direction of the project, which consist in sorting/dispatch faces to windowon one side and to an other material on the other, according to the winter sun and a pourcentage param.
Despite it is more complicated than the Serie one, it seems seems to create the same diversity of issues.
Until now, with the 5 different combinations of Serie 1, and the 3 of Serie 2, with and without using the different Glazing/window components, here are the logs i got from both HBZone component or OpenStudio component:
From OpenStudio - "1. The simulation has not run correctly because of this severe error: ** Severe ** BuildingSurface:Detailed="00073E23257843B6A948", invalid Construction Name="ETFE" - has Window materials.">> Has to deal with the way i'm trying to assign too early a customized EPConstruction material ? Done it wrong ? I tried to reload it in the library but doesn't change anything...
From OpenStudio - "1. The simulation has not run correctly because of this severe error: ** Severe ** BuildingSurface:Detailed="000579CD749E46DFA5EA", invalid Construction Name="EXTERIOR WINDOW" - has Window materials.">> Is it an issue in the way i define my surfs both as "WINDOW" (5) for srfType and Outdoors on the same component ?
From Create HBZone -"1. Solution exception:'EPZone' object has no attribute 'shdCntrlZoneInstructs'"
>> Happens when i try to introduce my ETFE EpMaterial after creating my first HBZone, with a Set EP Zone Construction, so this material seems to be not working either before and after trying to create an HB Zone
From Create HBZone- "1. Solution exception: 73df51a3b2144b1e858b has been moved, scaled or rotated."If you need to move or rotate a Honeybee object you should use Honeybee move, rotate or mirror components. You can find them under 12|WIP tab.
>> >> wich seems to exist in some on other thread Here and was a coding bug supposed to be fixed.
And last but not least ...
From OpenStudio - "1. The simulation has not run correctly because of this severe error: ** Severe ** checkSubSurfAzTiltNorm: Outward facing angle of subsurface differs more than 90.0 degrees from base surface.2. The simulation has failed because of this fatal error: ** Fatal ** GetSurfaceData: Errors discovered, program terminates" .
I'm attaching the file with each attempt in this post. The definitions are disabled and the log already copied separatly so there is no need to compute each of them to see what's wrong.
If someone from the beginner to one of the Kings of HoneyBee has any relevant answer/solution to this attempt with complex geometry Issue it will be really nice for me so i could to move forward !!
Thanks in advance guys and have a great day !
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nd improvements. Many of the new features and components announced in the last release have become stable and have emerged from their WIP section. Additionally, after two years of work, we are happy to announce that we finally have full support of an OpenStudio connection within Honeybee, which has ushered in a whole host of new features, notably the modelling of detailed HVAC systems. 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.
LADYBUG
1 - Solar Hot Water Components Out of WIP
After much beta-testing, bug-fixing, and general development, all of the Photovoltaic and Solar Hot Water components are now fully out of WIP! The main component is based on a Chengchu Yan's publication. Components have been added to Ladybug thanks to the efforts of Chengchu Yan and Djordje Spasic.. See Djorje’s original release post of the solar hot water components for more information on the components that just made it out of WIP.
2 - New Terrain Shading Mask Released in WIP
In addition to Djordje’s prolific addition of renewable energy components, he has also contributed a widely-useful component to generate terrain shading masks, which account for the shading of surrounding mountains/terrain in simulations. While initially added to assist the solar radiation radiation and renewable energy components, the component will undergo development to optimize it for energy and daylight simulations over the next few months. Another new component called Horizon Angles can be used to visualize and export horizon angles. You can test them out now by accessing them in the WIP section. For more information, see Djordje’s release post on the GH forum here.
3 - New Mesh Selector Component
After realizing that the Optimal Shade Creator component has applications to a whole range of analyses, it has now been re-branded as the Mesh Selector and has been optimized to work easily with these many analyses. Specifically, the component selects out the portion of a mesh that meets a given threshold. This can be the portion of a shade benefit analysis meeting a certain level of shade desirability, the portion of a radiation study meeting a certain level of fulx, the portion of a daylight analysis meeting a certain lux threshold, and much more!
4 - Solar Adjusted Temperature Now Includes Long Wave Radiation
Thanks to a question asked by Aymeric and a number of clarifications made by Djordje Spasic, the Solar Adjusted Temperature component now includes the ability to account for long-wave radiative loss to the sky in addition to it original capability to account for short wave radiation from the sun. As such, the component now includes all capabilities of similar outdoor comfort tools such as RayMan. The addition of this capability is also paralleled by the addition of a new horizontalInfraredRadiation output on the ImportEPW component. See the updated solar adjusted example file hereto see how to use the component properly.
5 - Support for both Log and Power Law Wind Profiles
In preparation for the future release of the Butterfly CFD-modelling insect, the Ladybug Wind Profile component now includes the option of either power law or log law wind profiles, which are both used extensively in CFD studies. Thanks goes to Theodoros Galanos for providing the formulas!
6 - New Radiant Asymmetry Comfort Components
Prompted by a suggestion from Christian Kongsgaard, Ladybug now includes components to calculate radiant asymmetry discomfort! For examples of how to use the components see this example file for spatial analysis of radiant asymmetry discomfort and this example for temporal analysis.
7 - Pedestrian Wind Comfort Component Released in WIP
In preparation for the impending release of the butterfly CFD-modelling insect, Djordje Spasic with assistance from Liam Harrington has contributed a component to evaluate outdoor discomfort and pedestrian safety. The component identifies if certain areas around the building are suitable for sitting, building entrances-exits, window shopping... based on its wind microclimate. Dangerous areas due to high wind speeds are also identified.You can check it out now in the WIP section.
HONEYBEE
1 - New HVAC Systems and Full OpenStudio Support
After a significant amount of development on the part of the OpenStudio team and two years of effort on the part of LB+HB developers, we (finally!) have full support for an OpenStudio connection within Honeybee. By this, we mean that any energy simulation property that can be assigned to a HBZone will be taken into account in the simulation run by the OpenStudio component. The connection to OpenStudio has brought with it several new capabilities. Most notably, you can now assign full HVAC systems and receive energy results in units of electricity and fuel instead of simple heating and cooling loads. This Honeybee release includes 14 built-in HVAC template systems that can be assigned to the zones, each of which can be customized:
0. Ideal Air Loads 1. PTAC | Residential 2. PTHP | Residential 3. Packaged Single Zone - AC 4. Packaged Single Zone - HP 5. Packaged VAV w/ Reheat 6. Packaged VAV w/ PFP Boxes 7. VAV w/ Reheat 8. VAV w/ PFP Boxes 9. Warm Air Furnace - Gas Fired 10.Warm Air Furnace - Electric 11.Fan Coil Units + DOAS 12.Active Chilled Beams + DOAS 13.Radiant Floors + DOAS 14.VRF + DOAS
Systems 1-10 are ASHRAE Baseline systems that represent much of what has been added to building stock over the last few decades while systems 11-14 are systems that are commonly being installed today to reduce energy use. Here is an example file showing how to assign these systems in Honeybee and interpret the results and here is an example showing how to customize the HVAC system specifications to a wide variety of cases. To run the file, you will need to have OpenStudio installed and you can download and install OpenStudio from here.
In addition to these template systems within Honeybee, the OpenStudio interface includes hundreds of HVAC components to build your own custom HVAC systems. OpenStudio also has a growing number of user-contributed HVAC system templates that have been integrated into a set of scripts called "Measures" that you can apply to your OpenStudio model within the OpenStudio interface. You can find these system templates by searching for them in the building components library. Here is a good tutorial video on how to apply measures to your model within the OpenStudio interface. Honeybee includes a component that runs these measures from Grasshopper (without having to use the OpenStudio interface), which you can see a demo video of here. However, this component is currently in WIP as OpenStudio team is still tweaking the file structure of measures and it is fairly safe to estimate that, by the next stable release of Honeybee, we will have full support of OpenStudio measures within GH.
2 - Phasing Out IDF Exporter
With the connection to OpenStudio now fully established, this release marks the start of a transition away from exporting directly to EnergyPlus and the beginning of Honeybee development that capitalizes on OpenStudio’s development. As such THIS WILL BE THE LAST STABLE RELEASE THAT INCLUDES THE HONEYBEE_RUN ENERGY SIMULATION COMPONENT.
The Export to OpenStudio component currently does everything that the Run Energy Simulation component does and, as such, it is intended that all GH definitions using the Run Energy Simulation component should replace it with the OpenStudio component. You can use the same Read EP Result components to import the results from the OpenStudio component and you can also use the same Energy Sim Par/Generate EP Output components to customize the parameters of the simulation. The only effective difference between the two components is that the OpenStudio component enables the modeling of HVAC and exports the HBZones to an .osm file before converting it to an EnergyPlus .idf.
For the sake of complete clarity, we should state that OpenStudio is simply an interface for EnergyPlus and, as such, the same calculation engine is under the hood of both the Export to OpenStudio component and the Run Energy Simulation component. At present, you should get matching energy simulation results between the Run Energy Simulation component and a run of the same zones with the OpenStudio component (using an ideal air system HVAC).
All of this is to say that you should convert your GH definitions that use the Run Energy Simulation component to have the OpenStudio component and this release is the best time to do it (while the two components are supported equally). Additionally, with this version of Honeybee you will no longer need to install EnergyPlus before using Honeybee and you will only need to install OpenStudio (which includes EnergyPlus in the install).
3 - New Schedule Generation Components
Thanks to the efforts of Antonello Di Nunzio, we now have 2 new components that ease the creation of schedule-generation in Honeybee. The new components make use of the native Grasshopper “Gener Pool” component to give a set of sliders for each hour of the day. Additionally, Antonello has included an annual schedule component that contains a dictionary of all holidays of every nearly every nation (phew!). Finally, this annual schedule component can output schedules in the text format recognized by EnergyPlus, which allows them to be written directly into the IDF instead of a separate CSV file. This will significantly reduce the size of files needed to run simulations and can even reduce the number of components on your canvas that are needed to add custom schedules. For more information, see Antonello’s explanatory images here and Antonello's example file here. You can also see a full example file of how to apply the schedules to energy simulations here.
4 - EnergyPlus Lookup Folder, Re-run OSM/IDF, and Read Result Dictionary
With the new capabilities of OpenStudio, we have also added a number of components to assist with managing all of the files that you get from the simulation. In particular, Abraham Yezioro has added a Lookup EnergyPlus Folder component that functions very similarly to the Lookup Daylight Folder component. This way, you can run an Energy simulation once and explore the results separately. Furthermore, we have added components to Re-Run OpenStudio .osm files or EnergyPlus .idf files within Grasshopper. These components are particularly useful if you edit these .osm or .idf files outside of Honeybee and want to re-run them to analyze their results in Grasshopper. Lastly, a component has been added to parse the .rdd (or Result Data Dictionary) file that EnergyPlus produces, enabling you to see all of the possible outputs that you can request from a given simulation.
5 - Electric Lighting Components Out of WIP
After Sarith Subramaniam’s initial components to model electric lights with Radiance in the last release, we are happy to report that they have been fully tested and are out of WIP. Improvements include support for all types of light fixture geometries and the ability to use the components in a more “Grasshoppery” list-like fashion. See Sarith’s original release post for more information and several example files showing how to use the components can be found here. 1 , 2 , 3 .
6 - Improvements to THERM Components
A number of bug fixes and improvements have been made to the THERM components in order to make their application more flexible and smooth. Special thanks is due to Derin Yilmaz , Mel King , Farnaz , Ben (@benmo1) , and Abraham Yezioro for all of the great feedback in the process of improving these components.
7 - HBObject Transform Components
After some demand for components that can ease the generation of buildings with modular zone types, two components to transform HBObjects with all of their properties have been added to the 00 | Honeybee section. The components allow you to produce copies of zones that are translated or rotated from the original position.
8 - Comfort Maps Supports PET and Integration of CFD Results
Thanks to the addition of the ‘Physiological Equivalent Temperature’ (PET) component by Djordje Spasic in the last stable release, it is now possible to make comfort maps of PET with Honeybee. PET is particularly helpful for evaluating OUTDOOR comfort with detailed wind fields at a high spatial resolution. As such, the new PET recipe has also been optimized for integration with CFD results. The windSpeed_ input can now accept the file path to a .csv file that is organized with 8760 values in each column and a number of columns that correspond to the number of test points. Components to generate this csv from Butterfly CFD results will be coming in later releases. Stay tuned!
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.
Enjoy!Ladybug Analysis Tools Development Team
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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!…
a and we'll stop adding new stuff. At this point the Grasshopper version will be rolled to 1.0 Beta 1 and we'll keep on fixing serious bugs, resulting in Grasshopper 1.0 Beta 2 etc. etc. until the product is stable enough to be treated as a commercially viable product.
This does not mean Grasshopper will no longer be free. Robert McNeel & Associates (who develop and own the copyrights to Grasshopper) haven't decided yet whether or not to sell Grasshopper or whether to keep it as a free plug-in for Rhino customers.
As soon as Grasshopper 1.0 goes into beta, all development (apart from the odd bug-fix) stops and we start typing on Grasshopper 2.0. It will probably be a few months until the first 2.0 WIP version is released but basically the whole process starts over.
What are we looking to accomplish for 1.0 and which things are planned for 2.0 and beyond? The only major feature still missing in 1.0 is the Remote Control Panel. This feature was removed at some point and has been partially rewritten since then. Once it's finished, we consider the 1.0 feature set to be complete.
To be honest we've made very few concrete plans yet concerning 2.0, however it's clear that some things need to be at least seriously considered and researched. Here follows a list in no particular order:
Documentation System. This is one of the things we know we're going to do as we've already started. The Grasshopper help system will need to be rewritten and a lot of help topics need to be typed up. We have a pretty good idea what it is we want to accomplish with the new help and how we're going to go about it.
Vocabulary. Along with new documentation we'll critically analyse the current terminology and vocabulary of Grasshopper. We'll probably come up with glossaries and style sheets. We want to use words that are —at best— self documenting and —at worst— non ambiguous.
SDK and core library cleanup/improvement. Grasshopper was the first large scale product I ever developed and a lot of mistakes were made in the SDK design. A lot of functions and classes have been marked obsolete over time and many operations are not properly bottlenecked. I also want to add a lot more events so it's easier for code to keep close tabs on what's going on at any given moment.
GUI platform. At the moment Grasshopper is pure .NET winforms using GDI+ for all the interface drawing. There are certain performance issues with using large GDI+ surfaces and certain limitations on what we can and cannot draw. We will be investigating other graphics pipelines such as WPF, OpenGL, DirectX, OpenTK and whatever else seems promising.
Multi-threading. It is clear that some components are embarrassingly parallel, and since almost every single laptop and desktop has at least 4 cores these days it would be a shame not to use them. We will investigate what it takes to implement multi-threading as a standard feature.
Large file support. Grasshopper becomes awkward to use when a document contains more than a hundred or so components. We need to both improve the interface to provide methods for layering or grouping sub-algorithms and also add ways to reduce memory and computational overhead.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia…
s levels of detail by subdividing a 6 sided cube mesh and projecting its vertices according to a referenced height map. This is one of the standard conventions for building full sizes planets. At the lowest level (0) the mesh planet is made of 6 pieces(each 32x32 resolution). The next level down (1) is made of 24 pieces... 6 divided by 4 = 24. Level (2) is 96 quads etc etc. The script will generate each quad at its sub-division level and compare edge vertices to neighboring quads. It will then make sure any shared vertices are in fact at the same projected vector. This ensures a planet quad with edge vertices that match.
The problems comes in texturing each quad.
If I build the quad as a nurb surface from points I can place the texture easily because each surface UV maps squarely to my texture map (which is also square).
If I build the quad as a mesh I cannot just apply the square texture to the mesh UVs. This is because when you unwrap the UVs from a mesh they will not unwrap like a nurb surface's UVs. Therefore to get the correct mapping I would have to manipulate each UV back to an evenly aligned array (which is 1024 points in a 32x32 resolution UV). Maya and blender have 'relax uv' and 'align UV' functions but they don't do the trick and manual corrections are out of the question. So why not skip the mesh method and use the nurb method?
I did this and there is a trade off. The nurb will accept the material texture I want with no other work on my end but when I export the object as an .obj rhino creates its own mesh to describe the nurb(with various unsatisfactory setting options). This works great up to a point because at some level the interpreted mesh will have vertices that do no match at the edges, ie .. creating visible seams in the mesh. The picture below is the nearly seamless planet at LOD(1) made of 24 quads, each with 32x32 vertice resolution and a 512x512 jpg texture running in Unity3d 5. It works but at close level there are seams. This will be resolved simply by having the next LOD(x) instantiate before getting close enough to see the seam but at core nerd level I want the seamless mesh.
So, I can make the seamless mesh but I can not realistically texture map it. I can also make the nurb surface from points and texture it at the expense of the edge vertices matching. I am at the split in the road but I want to have my cake and eat it too. Thoughts, comments, trolls...?
Thanks for reading =)
Footnote: For you pros I am not using seamless noise across the map I am using grasshopper to sew up my otherwise non perfect edges.
Other programs in the pipeline:
-WorldMachine 2
-Wilbur
-Photoshop
-Unity3d…
t. So here we go!
1. Honeybee is brown and not yellow [stupid!]...
As you probably remember Honeybee logo was initially yellow because of my ignorance about Honeybees. With the help of our Honeybee expert, Michalina, now the color is corrected. I promised her to update everyone about this. Below are photos of her working on the honeybee logo and the results of her study.
If you think I'm exaggerating by calling her a honeybee expert you better watch this video:
Thank you Michalina for the great work! :). I corrected the colors. No yellow anymore. The only yellow arrows represent sun rays and not the honeybee!
2. Yellow or brown, W[here]TH Honeybee is?
I know. It has been a long time after I posted the initial video and it is not fun at all to wait for a long time. Here is the good news. If you are following the Facebook page you probably now that the Daylighting components are almost ready.
Couple of friends from Grasshopper community and RADIANCE community has been helping me with testing/debugging the components. I still think/hope to release the daylighting components at some point in January before Ladybug gets one year old.
There have been multiple changes. I finally feel that the current version of Honeybee is simple enough for non-expert users to start running initial studies and flexible enough for advanced users to run advanced studies. I will post a video soon and walk you through different components.
I think I still need more time to modify the energy simulation components so they are not going to be part of the next release. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to set up and run a wrong energy simulation and I really don’t want to add one new GIGO app to the world of simulation. We already have enough of that. Moreover I’m still not quite happy with the workflow. Please bear with me for few more months and then we can all celebrate!
I recently tested the idea of connecting Grasshopper to OpenStudio by using OpenStudio API successfully. If nothing else, I really want to release the EnergyPlus components so I can concentrate on Grasshopper > OpenStudio development which I personally think is the best approach.
3. What about wind analysis?
I have been asked multiple times that if Ladybug will have a component for wind study. The short answer is YES! I have been working with EFRI-PULSE project during the last year to develop a free and open source web-based CFD simulation platform for outdoor analysis.
We had a very good progress so far and our rockstar Stefan recently presented the results of the work at the American Physical Society’s 66th annual DFD meeting and the results looks pretty convincing in comparison to measured data. Here is an image from the presentation. All the credits go to Stefan Gracik and EFRI-PULSE project.
The project will go live at some point next year and after that I will release the Butterfly which will let you prepare the model for the CFD simulation and send it to EFRI-PULSE project. I haven’t tried to run the simulations locally yet but I’m considering that as a further development. Here is how the component and the logo looks like right now.
4. Teaching resources
It has been almost 11 months from the first public release of Ladybug. I know that I didn't do a good job in providing enough tutorials/teaching materials and I know that I won’t be able to put something comprehensive together soon.
Fortunately, ladybug has been flying in multiple schools during the last year. Several design, engineering and consultant firms are using it and it has been thought in several workshops. As I checked with multiple of you, almost everyone told me that they will be happy to share their teaching materials; hence I started the teaching resources page. Please share your materials on the page. They can be in any format and any language. Thanks in advance!
I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying/will enjoy the longest night of the year. Happy Yalda!
Cheers,
-Mostapha
…
3. receiver gets data from sender via input (0) < the data here may be changed in the meantime, for instance if its a double then I would like to add 1 to it.
4. receiver sends data to sender's input(2)
5. go to 1.
VS 2013 studio project folder
SENDER
Public Class loopStart Inherits GH_Component
Dim cnt As Integer
Friend Property counter() As Integer Get Return cnt End Get Set(value As Integer) cnt = value End Set End Property
Dim iData As New GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo)
Friend Property startData() As GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo) Get Return iData End Get Set(value As GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo)) iData = value End Set End Property
Public Sub New() MyBase.New("loopStart", "loopStart", "Start the loop with this one.", "Extra", "Extra") End Sub
Public Overrides ReadOnly Property ComponentGuid() As System.Guid Get Return New Guid("bdf1b60d-6757-422b-9d2d-08257996a88c") End Get End Property
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterInputParams(ByVal pManager As Grasshopper.Kernel.GH_Component.GH_InputParamManager) pManager.AddGenericParameter("Data", "dIn", "Data to loop", GH_ParamAccess.tree) pManager.AddIntegerParameter("Steps", "S", "Number of loops", GH_ParamAccess.item) pManager.AddGenericParameter("<X>", "<X>", "Please leave this one alone, don't input anything.", GH_ParamAccess.tree) pManager.Param(2).Optional = True End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterOutputParams(ByVal pManager As Grasshopper.Kernel.GH_Component.GH_OutputParamManager) pManager.AddGenericParameter("Data", "dOut", "Data to loop", GH_ParamAccess.tree) End Sub
Public Overrides Sub CreateAttributes() m_attributes = New loopStartAttributes(Me) End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub SolveInstance(ByVal DA As Grasshopper.Kernel.IGH_DataAccess)
Dim numLoop As Integer DA.GetData(1, numLoop)
Dim loopDt As New Grasshopper.Kernel.Data.GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo)
If cnt = 0 Then Me.startData.Clear() DA.GetDataTree(0, Me.startData) loopDt = startData.Duplicate DA.SetDataTree(0, loopDt) End If
If cnt < numLoop - 1 And cnt > 0 Then DA.GetDataTree(2, loopDt) DA.SetDataTree(0, loopDt) Me.ExpireSolution(True) Else DA.GetDataTree(2, loopDt) DA.SetDataTree(0, loopDt) End If
cnt += 1
End Sub
End Class
RECEIVER
Public Class loopEnd Inherits GH_Component
Dim aData As New GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo)
Friend Property anyData() As GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo) Get Return aData End Get Set(value As GH_Structure(Of IGH_Goo)) aData = value End Set End Property
Public Sub New() MyBase.New("loopEnd", "loopEnd", "End the loop with this one.", "Extra", "Extra") End Sub
Public Overrides ReadOnly Property ComponentGuid() As System.Guid Get Return New Guid("3ffa3b66-8160-4ab3-87c9-356b2c17aadd") End Get End Property
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterInputParams(ByVal pManager As Grasshopper.Kernel.GH_Component.GH_InputParamManager) pManager.AddGenericParameter("Data", "dIn", "Data to loop", GH_ParamAccess.tree) End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterOutputParams(ByVal pManager As Grasshopper.Kernel.GH_Component.GH_OutputParamManager) pManager.AddGenericParameter("Data", "dOut", "Data after the loop", GH_ParamAccess.tree) End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub SolveInstance(ByVal DA As Grasshopper.Kernel.IGH_DataAccess) Me.aData.Clear() DA.GetDataTree(0, Me.aData) runner()
DA.SetDataTree(0, Me.aData) End Sub
Sub runner()
Dim doc As GH_document = Grasshopper.Instances.ActiveCanvas.Document Dim docl As list(Of iGH_DocumentObject) = (doc.Objects)
For i As Integer = 0 To docl.count - 1 Step 1 Dim comp As Object = docl(i) If comp.NickName = "loopStart" Then Dim compp As IGH_Param = comp.Params.input(2) compp.VolatileData.Clear() compp.AddVolatileDataTree(anyData) Exit For End If Next End Sub
End Class
…
option, after downloading check if .ghuser files are blocked (right click -> "Properties" and select "Unblock"). Then paste them in File->Special Folders->User Object Folder. You can download the example files from here. They act in similar way, Ladybug Photovoltaics components do: we pick a surface, and get an answer to a question: "How much thermal energy, for a certain number of persons can my roof, building facade... generate if I would populate them with Solar Water Heating collectors"? This information can then be used to cover domestic hot water, space heating or space cooling loads:
Components enable setting specific details of the system, or using simplified ones. They cover analysis of domestic hot water load, final performance of the SWH system, its embodied energy, energy value, consumption, emissions... And finding optimal system and storage size. By Dr. Chengchu Yan and Djordje Spasic, with invaluable support of Dr. Willian Beckman, Dr. Jason M. Keith, Jeff Maguire, Nicolas DiOrio, Niraj Palsule, Sargon George Ishaya and Craig Christensen. Hope you will enjoy using the components! References: 1) Calculation of delivered energy: Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, John Wiley and Sons, J. Duffie, W. Beckman, 4th ed., 2013. Technical Manual for the SAM Solar Water Heating Model, NREL, N. DiOrio, C. Christensen, J. Burch, A. Dobos, 2014. A simplified method for optimal design of solar water heating systems based on life-cycle energy analysis, Renewable Energy journal, Yan, Wang, Ma, Shi, Vol 74, Feb 2015
2) Domestic hot water load: Modeling patterns of hot water use in households, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lutz, Liu, McMahon, Dunham, Shown, McGrue; Nov 1996. ASHRAE 2003 Applications Handbook (SI), Chapter 49, Service water heating
3) Mains water temperature Residential alternative calculation method reference manual, California energy commission, June 2013. Development of an Energy Savings Benchmark for All Residential End-Uses, NREL, August 2004. Solar water heating project analysis chapter, Minister of Natural Resources Canada, 2004.
4) Pipe diameters and pump power: Planning & Installing Solar Thermal Systems, Earthscan, 2nd edition
5) Sun postion and POA irradiance, the same as for Ladybug Photovoltaics (Michalsky (1988), diffuse irradiance by Perez (1990), ground reflected irradiance by Liu, Jordan (1963))
6) Optimal system and storage tank size: A simplified method for optimal design of solar water heating systems based on life-cycle energy analysis, Renewable Energy journal, Yan, Wang, Ma, Shi, Vol 74, Feb 2015.…