re are major changes and enhancements.
HONEYBEE
More Flexible Workflow - Many small modifications were made to support a more flexible workflow, such as the ability to separate a zone created with masses2Zones into editable HBSrfs that can be recombined. For the energy components, it is now possible to plug custom constructions directly into the components that set the zone constructions without writing them first into the library. For the daylighting components it is now possible to change all of the materials of specific surface types at once.
Support for Complex Geometry - Many small bugs for complex geometry have been fixed including the ability to import energy results correctly for curved NURBS surfaces as well as unconventional window configurations. Also, the intersectMasses component now almost always succeeds in splitting all of the surfaces of adjacent zones, no matter how complex the intersection is.
Automatic Download Issues Fixed - Many users who faced issues with not having “gendaymtx.exe” or who had trouble syncing with our github know that we faced an issue with automatic background downloads.
Air Walls - Honeybee EnergyPlus models now officially support air walls (or virtual partitions) in a basic implementation. Now, any time that you use the air wall construction or set a surface type to “air wall,” the air between adjacent zones will be automatically mixed. At present, this mixing is just a constant flow based on the surface area between zones connected by air walls multiplied by an adjustable “flow factor.” It is important to stress that this basic air mixing is not with the EnergyPlus Airflow Network, although the groundwork laid in this release will eventually allow for the implementation of the Airflow Network in future releases. As such, this present air mixing is only suitable for multi-zone conditions where there is not significant buoyancy-driven flow between zones.
Natural Ventilation - To go along with the new potential introduced by air walls, there has been a basic implementation of EnergyPlus’s natural ventilation objects in a new component called “Set EP Airflow”. The current setup allows for three possible types of natural ventilation: 1) natural ventilation through windows (with auto-calculated flow based on window area, outdoor wind speed/direction, and stack effects), 2) custom wind and stack objects that can be used to model things such as chimneys off of single zones, and 3) constant, fan-driven natural ventilation.
Additional Thermal Mass - The capability to add additional thermal mass to zones has been added. This is useful for factoring in the mass of indoor furniture or heavy interior objects such as chimneys.
New Utility Components - Abraham has added a couple of useful components to help calculate lighting loads based on bulb types and target lighting levels as well as a converter from ACH to the m3/s-m2 that the other HB components accept. Along this vein, there is also a component for adding in the resistance of Air Films to HB constructions.
Improved and Editable Ideal Air Loads System - The EnergyPlus Ideal Air System now goes through an automatic sizing period at the start of the simulation based on the extreme weeks of the weather file. Furthermore, the ability to adjust many of the parameters of the ideal air loads system have been added with a new “Set Ideal Air Loads Parameters” component. The component allows you to add in heat recovery, air side economizers and demand-controlled ventilation.
OpenStudio Export Update - The OpenStudio workflow is still largely under development but this release includes a version with a working VAV and PTHP system template for those curious with experimenting. Note that not all of the new features available for the basic “Run Energy Simulation” component are available for the OpenStudio component (such as air walls, natural ventilation, or additional thermal mass).
Microclimate/Indoor Comfort Maps - Blossoming from initial experiments with the radiant temperature map, a workflow for looking into sub-zone microclimate and indoor comfort has been initiated. All components for this are presently under the Honeybee WIP tab but, over the next month, they will be completing their development phase and moving into the rest of the tabs. If you are interested in testing when they are ready, please let Chris know. For a teaser video of the intended capabilities, see this video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNylb42FPIc&list=UUc6HWbF4UtdKdjbZ2tvwiCQ)
LADYBUG
Monthly Bar Chart - After much demand from multiple parties, a new component to create monthly bar and line charts has been added. The component is particularly useful for plotting the outputs of the “Average Data” component like monthly EPW data or averaged monthly-per hour data. It also supports daily data and any type of Energy simulation results.
Wind Profile - To go along with the new capabilities of natural ventilation in Honeybee, Ladybug now has a fully fleshed-out Wind Profile component that allows you to visualize how wind speed changes with height in relation to your building geometry. The component is geared to understanding the conditions of prevailing wind and will be useful in the future for setting up CFD models. Credit goes to Djordje Spasic for adding in all of the new capabilities. In a similar vein, the appearance of the wind rose has also been improved thanks to suggestions from Alejandra Menchaca.
Faster Solar Adjusted Temperature - Thanks to the SolarCal method from the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/89m1h2dg), the solar adjusted temperature component now includes an option for a much faster calculation that produces results that are very close to those originally obtained with the genCumSky component. Instead of using the cumulative sky, the component can now accept the direct and diffuse radiation from the ImportEPW component. Over a whole year, this essentially takes a calculation that used to be a half-hour and shrinks it down to 10 seconds. Thanks again to those at UC Berkeley for keeping their work open source!
Instructions - Last but not the least, [It took me almost two years to understand this but finally] we have a text file that describes the installation step by step and is way easier to modify than a video. You can find it in the zip file. Credit goes to Chris!
We also want to welcome Anton, Patrick and Sandeep to the team. Anton has kicked off his development by working on a component to import and visualize epw ground temperature data and he will be continuing to develop components to bring in reliable precipitation data to Ladybug. With this basis, he will continue to implement Honeybee components for ground heat storage, earth tubes, rain collection and hot water systems. Patrick and Sandeep are working on integration of Honeybee to Energy Performance Calculator.
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.
Enjoy!…
lly it should not make much of a difference - random number generation is not affected, mutation also is not. crossover is a bit more tricky, I use Simulated Binary Crossover (SBX-20) which was introduced already in 1194:
Deb K., Agrawal R. B.: Simulated Binary Crossover for Continuous Search Space, inIITK/ME/SMD-94027, Convenor, Technical Reports, Indian Institue of Technology, Kanpur, India,November 1994
Abst ract. The success of binary-coded gene t ic algorithms (GA s) inproblems having discrete sear ch sp ace largely depends on the codingused to represent the prob lem variables and on the crossover ope ratorthat propagates buildin g blocks from pare nt strings to childrenst rings . In solving optimization problems having continuous searchspace, binary-co ded GAs discr et ize the search space by using a codingof the problem var iables in binary st rings. However , t he coding of realvaluedvari ables in finit e-length st rings causes a number of difficulties:inability to achieve arbit rary pr ecision in the obtained solution , fixedmapping of problem var iab les, inh eren t Hamming cliff problem associatedwit h binary coding, and processing of Holland 's schemata incont inuous search space. Although a number of real-coded GAs aredevelop ed to solve optimization problems having a cont inuous searchspace, the search powers of these crossover operators are not adequate .In t his paper , t he search power of a crossover operator is defined int erms of the probability of creating an arbitrary child solut ion froma given pair of parent solutions . Motivated by t he success of binarycodedGAs in discret e search space problems , we develop a real-codedcrossover (which we call the simulated binar y crossover , or SBX) operatorwhose search power is similar to that of the single-point crossoverused in binary-coded GAs . Simulation results on a number of realvaluedt est problems of varying difficulty and dimensionality suggestt hat the real-cod ed GAs with t he SBX operator ar e ab le to perform asgood or bet t er than binary-cod ed GAs wit h t he single-po int crossover.SBX is found to be particularly useful in problems having mult ip le optimalsolutions with a narrow global basin an d in prob lems where thelower and upper bo unds of the global optimum are not known a priori.Further , a simulation on a two-var iable blocked function showsthat the real-coded GA with SBX work s as suggested by Goldberg
and in most cases t he performance of real-coded GA with SBX is similarto that of binary GAs with a single-point crossover. Based onth ese encouraging results, this paper suggests a number of extensionsto the present study.
7. ConclusionsIn this paper, a real-coded crossover operator has been develop ed bas ed ont he search characte rist ics of a single-point crossover used in binary -codedGAs. In ord er to define the search power of a crossover operator, a spreadfactor has been introduced as the ratio of the absolute differences of thechildren points to that of the parent points. Thereaft er , the probabilityof creat ing a child point for two given parent points has been derived forthe single-point crossover. Motivat ed by the success of binary-coded GAsin problems wit h discrete sear ch space, a simul ated bin ary crossover (SBX)operator has been develop ed to solve problems having cont inuous searchspace. The SBX operator has search power similar to that of the single-po intcrossover.On a number of t est fun ctions, including De Jong's five te st fun ct ions, ithas been found that real-coded GAs with the SBX operator can overcome anumb er of difficult ies inherent with binary-coded GAs in solving cont inuoussearch space problems-Hamming cliff problem, arbitrary pr ecision problem,and fixed mapped coding problem. In the comparison of real-coded GAs wit ha SBX operator and binary-coded GAs with a single-point crossover ope rat or ,it has been observed that the performance of the former is better than thelatt er on continuous functions and the performance of the former is similarto the lat ter in solving discret e and difficult functions. In comparison withanother real-coded crossover operator (i.e. , BLX-0 .5) suggested elsewhere ,SBX performs better in difficult test functions. It has also been observedthat SBX is particularly useful in problems where the bounds of the optimum
point is not known a priori and wher e there are multi ple optima, of whichone is global.Real-coded GAs wit h t he SBX op erator have also been tried in solvinga two-variab le blocked function (the concept of blocked fun ctions was introducedin [10]). Blocked fun ct ions are difficult for real-coded GAs , becauselocal optimal points block t he progress of search to continue towards t heglobal optimal point . The simulat ion results on t he two-var iable blockedfunction have shown that in most occasions , the sea rch proceeds the way aspr edicted in [10]. Most importantly, it has been observed that the real-codedGAs wit h SBX work similar to that of t he binary-coded GAs wit h single-pointcrossover in overcoming t he barrier of the local peaks and converging to t heglobal bas in. However , it is premature to conclude whether real-coded GAswit h SBX op erator can overcome t he local barriers in higher-dimensionalblocked fun ct ions.These results are encour aging and suggest avenues for further research.Because the SBX ope rat or uses a probability distribut ion for choosing a childpo int , the real-coded GAs wit h SBX are one st ep ahead of the binary-codedGAs in te rms of ach ieving a convergence proof for GAs. With a direct probabilist ic relationship between children and parent points used in t his paper,cues from t he clas sical stochast ic optimization methods can be borrowed toachieve a convergence proof of GAs , or a much closer tie between the classicaloptimization methods and GAs is on t he horizon.
In short, according to the authors my SBX operator using real gene values is as good as older ones specially designed for discrete searches, and better in continuous searches. SBX as far as i know meanwhile is a standard general crossover operator.
But:
- there might be better ones out there i just havent seen yet. please tell me.
- besides tournament selection and mutation, crossover is just one part of the breeding pipeline. also there is the elite management for MOEA which is AT LEAST as important as the breeding itself.
- depending on the problem, there are almost always better specific ways of how to code the mutation and the crossover operators. but octopus is meant to keep it general for the moment - maybe there's a way for an interface to code those things yourself..!?
2) elite size = SPEA-2 archive size, yes. the rate depends on your convergence behaviour i would say. i usually start off with at least half the size of the population, but mostly the same size (as it is hard-coded in the new version, i just realize) is big enough.
4) the non-dominated front is always put into the archive first. if the archive size is exceeded, the least important individual (the significant strategy in SPEA-2) are truncated one by one until the size is reached. if it is smaller, the fittest dominated individuals are put into the elite. the latter happens in the beginning of the run, when the front wasn't discovered well yet.
3) yes it is. this is a custom implementation i figured out myself. however i'm close to have the HypE algorithm working in the new version, which natively has got the possibility to articulate perference relations on sets of solutions.
…
tal at food4Rhino:
http://www.food4rhino.com/project/ladybug-Honeybee?ufh
Before addressing the changes in the software itself, we would like to announce the start of two new resources that have been added to help everyone learn and share knowledge across our community.
NEW RESOURCES
GH Example File Sharing - After recognizing how important example files are for sharing knowledge and capabilities in our community, we have initiated a github-based platform for sharing Grasshopper definitions called Hydra:https://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/index.htmlWhile the database of files is a little over 50 files at the moment, it is hoped that this will become THE forum where much of collective knowledge is exchanged and shared into the future. As you can see by clicking on any of the examples, you now are able to get a high-res visual of both the Rhino scene and the GH canvas without having to download files to your machine. Furthermore the search functionality through the database enables you to quickly and easily see all that our community has contributed on certain subjects (just by searching “shade” or “wind” for example).In addition to other files that have been contributed, you can find all of the original Ladybug examples here:https://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/index.html?keywords=LBExampleFilesAnd all of the original Honeybee examples here:https://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/index.html?keywords=HBExampleFiles
LB+HB Documentation - While our historical practice of including all documentation within component descriptions may have sufficed up until this point, we have since recognized that an online database of all this documentation would be helpful. Now, you can search for key terms throughout the entire documentation of the project in our beautiful online documentation database created by Mostapha:https://www.gitbook.com/book/mostapharoudsari/ladybug-primer/detailshttps://www.gitbook.com/book/mostapharoudsari/honeybee-primer/details
And now, onto the major changes and enhancements in the software:
LADYBUG
Photovoltaics Components - Based on original code from NREL’s PVWatts (http://pvwatts.nrel.gov), Djordje Spasic and Jason Sensibaugh have built a set of 5 components that perform detailed estimate of the electricity generated by Rhino/Grasshopper surfaces when populated with Photovoltaics (PV) modules.Components allow definition of losses and shading, finding optimal tilt and orientation angles, analysing performance, energy value, consumption and emissions of the PV system.
Enhanced Solar Envelope - Boris Plotnikov has contributed a solar envelope component that is not only much faster and more stable than the previous component but also allows you to input the geometries of buildings for which you would like to ensure solar access. This enables customization of the solar envelope to specific urban contexts in a manner that the previous envelope did not. The component also features a “solar access” option that draws the envelope above which a given site receives sun from a set of sun vectors. An example file can be found here:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=boris-p&fork=hydra&id=SolarEnvelope
Adaptive Comfort Chart - To assist with understanding the variations of the adaptive comfort model, an Adaptive Comfort Chart component has been added that functions in a similar manner to the psychrometric chart for the PMV model. In addition to granting a visualization of the adaptive standard itself, the chart is also particularly helpful for displaying the results of energy simulations in relation to the comfort polygon. The chart is based off of the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment’s Comfort Tool (http://comfort.cbe.berkeley.edu/) (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort_tool). An example file can be found here:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Adaptive_Comfort_Chart
Full Support for US + European Thermal Comfort Standards - Ladybug now supports the ability to model any of the variations of the Adaptive/PMV models for both the US (ASHRAE) and European (ISO) standards. This includes varying thresholds of percentage of people dissatisfied (PPD), varying thresholds for humidity ratios, the ability to use either a monthly average or daily running mean temperatures in the adaptive model, and even some functions that are not yet a part of these standards but are referenced widely in thermal comfort research. Such widely referenced functions include the ability to apply the adaptive model’s method to conditioned or mixed-mode buildings as well as the application of the adaptive model to times of the year when it is considered too cold by ASHRAE and the ISO for an adaptive standard. All of these variations on the standards can be accessed through the new “PMV Comfort Parameters” and “Adaptive Comfort Parameters” components. As a final nod to dual support for US/European standards, it is now possible to view the psychrometric chart as a Molier i,x diagram.
EPWMap - After years of struggling with the text-based indexing of the DOE’s epw file database, it is now possible to search for weather files using a map interface and search bar thanks to Mostapha’s recent web interface built with D3 and GoogleMaps (http://mostapharoudsari.github.io/epwmap/). From here on out, the Ladybug “Download EPW” component will direct you to this interface.
“RunItAll” Released as “Fly” - In preparation for future features that will assist with exploring of large multidimensional design spaces, this release of Ladybug includes a component by the name of “Fly” that is meant to run through all of the combinations of a given set of sliders. Those who follow this forum closely might recognize it as a reincarnated version of a component called “RunItAll” that appeared in some older example files. You can find an example file here: http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=mostaphaRoudsari&fork=hydra_1&id=Parametric_Daylight_Analysis
Shade Benefit Evaluator Validated + Published - After a long process of testing, the key functions within the comfort and energy shade benefit evaluator components have been validated against several similar software and energy modeling tools. A paper published to the SimAUD conference regarding this validation can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tvdj6d2giswurew/SIMAUD_Paper12.pdf?dl=0. Special recognition goes to Panagiotis Samaras, who ran many of these intensive tests for his thesis. Along with this validation, there are a few more variables that have been exposed to allow more freedom of running the shade benefit functions including the use of higher sky resolutions and multiple shade benefit test regions for a given shade.
Color Gradient Library - After realizing that several of us wanted quick access to common color gradients that we frequently plug into the Legend Parameters component, we have now added a component called “Color Gradient Library” to do just this. An image displaying all of these gradients can be found here:https://github.com/mostaphaRoudsari/ladybug/blob/master/resources/gradients.jpgAnd an example file showing how to use the library can be found here:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Color_LibraryIf you feel that there is a common gradient that is currently missing, feel free to start a discussion on our GH group about it and we should include it soon.
Solar Time Available - The Ladybug Sunpath now includes an option to display solar time, which many have found to be more intuitive and easy to work with when designing with solar geometry. Solar time is also useful for minimizing an east vs west bias that can develop in sunlight hour studies without having to generate sun vectors at very small timesteps.
Monthly/Daily Totals for Hourly Data - The Ladybug “Average Data” component now includes the ability to total the values for months and days (as opposed to timply averaging them). This is useful particularly when you want to get monthly or daily values of total energy or visualize these totals on the monthly bar chart.
Increased IP Functionality - This release of Ladybug includes several more features that assist with converting data for an IP audience including the ability to view an IP Psychrometric or Adaptive Chart by plugging in temperature values in Farenheit as well as a number of and new converter components for the following: Wh to BTU, R-Value SI to R-Value IP, m/s to mph, Liters to Gallons. Note that Honeybee is still largely SI (requiring your Rhino model to be in meters to run energy simulations).
Mesh-to-Hatch and Future BakeIt Plans - Given that the current BakeIt_ option has only been implemented on a few components with relatively minimal use, it has been decided that future implementations of BakeIt_ will provide not just a means of recording parametric results in the Rhino scene but will also support a full pathway to vector-based programs (like Illustrator and Inkscape). As such, BakeIt_ will place text in the Rhino scene as actual editable text (not meshes) and colored meshes will be output as groups of colored hatches (so that they appear as color-filled polygons in vector-based programs). In order to give those interested in this future capability a chance to experiment at the present, a “Mesh-To-Hatch” component has been added to the Extra tab.
HONEYBEE
Fully Functional Microclimate Maps - Finally, after a long and arduous thesis followed by a couple of months of bug-fixing, Chris Mackey is pleased to announce that the ability to produce high resolution temperature maps from EnergyPlus results is complete. Together, these maps account for four key variables that produce microclimatic diversity in and around buildings - MRT variation from different surface temperatures, solar radiation shining directly on occupants, average air temperature diversity, and air temperature stratification. In addition to using these 4 variables to produce high-resolution visuals of temperature, it is also possible to produce maps of thermal comfort by using any of the three primary thermal comfort models in Ladybug (PMV, Adaptive, and Outdoor (UTCI)). Support currently exists to produce maps for both indoor and outdoor conditions and, while the temperature values and indoor comfort values currently produced are highly accurate, the outdoor wind speeds are calculated using the simplified assumptions of EnergyPlus and will be revised to enable more accurate accounting for the effects of wind on outdoor comfort in the next stable release. The whole workflow is broken down into eight components that can all be found under the 9 | Energy Energy tab. For some videos showing some time-lapse thermal renderings made from these tools see this video playlist:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sj3ehUTSfKa1IHPSiuJU52AFor the full 150-page documentation of the tools produced for Chris’s thesis, see this link:https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4r4rd279y4td9n/Mackey_Thesis.pdf?dl=0Finally, if you want to dive in and produce some comfort maps for yourself, you can find an example file here for indoor maps:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Indoor_Microclimate_MapAnd an example file here for outdoor maps:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Outdoor_Microclimate_Map
Thermal Autonomy / Thermal Comfort Percent - In addition to the new thermal mapping capabilities, this release includes the ability to use these maps to calculate a series of spatial thermal comfort metrics that are meant to mirror the metrics currently used to evaluate daylight (daylight autonomy, UDI, etc.). Specifically, these metrics are the following:Thermal Comfort Percent - The percentage of occupied time that a given point in space is thermally comfortable.Thermal Autonomy - The percentage of occupied time that a given point in space is thermally comfortable without the addition of any heating or cooling energy.Overheated Hours - The percentage of occupied time when a given point is space is too hot to be thermally comfortable.Underheated Hours - The percentage of occupied time when a given point is space is too cold to be thermally comfortable.All of these metrics can be accessed through the “Thermal Autonomy Analysis” component and you can find an example file here:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Comfort_Autonomy
Energy Balance Visualizations - In order to help understand the flow of energy through Honeybee energy models, it is now possible to completely reconstruct the energy balance calculation of EnergyPlus from the energy simulation results. This is facilitated by the new EnergyPlus “Construct Energy Balance” component and some new features added to the monthly bar chart. See here for an example:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Energy_Balance
More Geometry Control for Glazing - In order to make it faster to assign several different types of glazing geometries to your energy models, the “AddHBGlz” can now be used to add glazing surfaces to HBzones (not just HBsurfaces). Furthermore, the “Glazing Based on Ratio” component now contains several more inputs that enable you to customize window geometry on orthogonal surfaces, including the ability to set the horizontal distance between windows and the ability to split windows vertically into a lower view window and higher daylight window.
Earth Tube Capability - Thanks to the efforts of Anton Szilasi, it is now possible to assign earth tubes to your energy models in order to test the potential of this powerful passive strategy. See here for an example file:http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=antonszilasi&fork=hydra&id=HB_EarthTube
North Input For Annual Daylight - After the toil of having to rotate your model any time you wanted to run an annual daylight analysis, we are happy to announce that the annual daylight recipe now contains a working “North” input.
Honeybee Object Transforms - After realizing that many of us wanted to construct energy models of multi-story buildings by duplicating and moving zones, this capability is now easily facilitated with a set of three components to duplicate and transform your HBObjects. Specifically, this includes a component to move (translate) your HBObject, mirror (reflect) your HBObject, and rotate your HBObject. Using these components ensures that any properties that you have assigned to your original HBObject will be present in the transformed HBOjbect, allowing you to build large energy models very quickly. The three components can currently be found under the WIP tab.
And finally, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Boris Plotnikov to the team. As mentioned in the above release notes, Boris has added a highly advanced solar envelope component to the project.
As always let us know your comments and suggestions.
Enjoy!
Ladybug+Honeybee development team
…
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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Known Bugs in Karamba3D 1.3.2 build 190919:
The cross section area of Australian CHS sections in the Karamba3D cross section library is up to 10% too small.
The 'sig-max' and 'sig-min' output of the