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…
o express my gratitude. I've been experimenting with your definitions (and still am), but let me extend my question.
Actually what I'm trying to achieve, is to recreate another project by Andrew Kudless, the spore lamp (I mentioned the Chrysalis at the beginning just because of the animation, which wasn't included in the Spore Lamp presentation).
Basically the spore lamp seems to me to be something like a preliminary study to the Chrysalis III project (I think it's a similar approach).
Andrew stated on his site that he used kangaroo for this project, so the Spore Lamp consists in my opinion either of a relaxed voronoi 3d diagram (b-rep, b-rep intersection) on a sphere which then has been planarized, or more likely it is a sort of relaxed facet dome.
The trick is to:
1. obtain a nicely-balanced voronoish diagram (or facet dome cells)
2. keep each cell/polyline planar (or force them with kangaroo to be planar) in order to move scale and loft them later on.
Here is what I have by now. (files: matsys spore lamp attempt)
That's the closest appearance that I got so far (simple move scale and loft of facet dome cells with the amount of transformations being proportional to the power of the initial cell area: bigger cell = bigger opening etc.) - with no relaxation of the diagram. But it's obviously not the same thing as the matsys design.
Here are some of my attempts of facet dome relaxation, but well, it certainly still not the right approach, and most importantly I don't know how to keep or force the cells to be planar after the relaxation.
1. pulling vertices to a sphere - no anchor points. That obviously doesn't make sense at all, but the relaxation without anchor points gives at the beginning a pattern that is closer to what I am looking for. (files: relaxation 01)
2. pulling vertices to a sphere - two faces of the initial facet dome anchored (files: relaxation 02)
3. pulling vertices to the initial geometry (facet dome) no anchor points (files: relaxation 03)
The cell pattern of the lamp kinda looks like this:
you can find it here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/kangaroo-0-095-released?g...
Done with Plankton (of course without the "gradient increase" appearance), but in fact not, I took a look at Daniel Parker's Plankton example files, and it's not quite the same thing. Also the cells aren't planar...
The last problem is that during the relaxation attempts that I did, the biggest initial cells became enormous, and it's not like that in the elegant project by Andrew Kudless, that I'd like to achieve.
So to sum up:
Goal no 1: Obtain an elegant voronoi /facet dome cell pattern on a sphere (or an ellipsoid surface, whatever).
Goal no 2: Keep the cells planar in order to be able to loft them later and obtain those pyramidal forms, and assemble easily
Any ideas? Or maybe there's a completely different approach to that?…
nd the challenge "Building the Invisible: Informing Digital Design with Real World Data". Information about each Workshop Cluster can be found here:
Cyber GardensUse the ForceUrban FeedsSuspended DreamsInteracting with the CityAgent ConstructionAuthored SensingPerforming SkinsResponsive Acoustic SurfacingHybrid Space Structure Typologies
The SmartGeometry 2011 Workshop will take place at CITA http://cita.karch.dk/
Applications to attend the SmartGeometry 2011 Workshop in Copenhagen will close on 31st January 2011. General Conference registration will open within 1 month.
We hope to see you there!
****************************************************
Workshop 28th-31st March
Shop Talk 1 April
Symposium 2 April
Reception 2 April
These events follow the highly successful previous SG events in Barcelona 2010, San Francisco 2009, Munich 2008, New York 2007, Cambridge/London, UK 2006 and multiple preceding events.
Click here for more info...
This year's Challenge is entitled:BUILDING THE INVISIBLEInforming Digital Design with Real World Data
THE PREMISEVast streams of data offer a rich resource for designers. By incorporating external information into our design processes the autonomy of the design is challenged. User data, energy calculations, embedded sensing, material and structural simulation, human behaviour and perception, particle flows and force fields allows design to be situated and responsive. From the simulation of megacities to the solid modelling of material systems, design has the potential to be informed by the real. Design sits not separate from is environment but inhabits an ecological system, open, dynamic and interdependent, diverse, partially self-organising, adaptive, and fragile. Across scale and within time we now have the chance to instil architecture with an immanent intelligence creating new relationships between the user, the built and its ecosphere.THE OPPORTUNITYSystems theorists suggest that data is only a raw material. It can be differentiated from information, knowledge and wisdom. Understanding is multi-levelled: understanding of relations, understanding of patterns, understanding of principles. As digital designers our challenge is in harnessing the power of computation to assist us in informing our design process. Computers help us collect, manage and analyse the environment and inform us about an abundance of data. Our challenge is to use these inputs in a meaningful way to help us make better informed design decisions.THE AIMSG 2011 explores how the incorporation of real world data challenges existing design thinking. The SG 2011 workshop aim is to create physical prototypes of design systems to be exhibited in the SG2011 exhibition.
The SmartGeometry Group is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the use of computational tools in architecture and engineering. SG brings professionals, academics, and industry together to explore the next generation of digital design. SG Workshops are non-platform specific, believing it is the methodology, not the tool, that matters.
…
Added by Shane Burger at 11:23am on January 6, 2011
erning how to do that on a sphere.
So I know already all the different approches of how to get a relaxed voronoi pattern on a free-form open surface, but still don't know how to obtain the same elegant effect on a sphere (or an ellipsoid closed surface, whatever), or how to relax the facet dome cells.
Andrew stated on his site that he used kangaroo for this project, so the Spore Lamp consists in my opinion either of a relaxed voronoi 3d diagram (b-rep, b-rep intersection) on a sphere the cells of which have been planarized later on, or more likely it is a sort of relaxed facet dome.
The trick is to:
1. obtain a nicely-balanced voronoish diagram (or facet dome cells) on a sphere
2. keep each cell/polyline planar (or force them with kangaroo to be planar) in order to move scale and loft them later on.
Here is what I have by now.(files: matsys spore lamp attempt)
That's the closest appearance that I got so far (simple move scale and loft of facet dome cells with the amount of transformations being proportional to the power of the initial cell area: bigger cell = bigger opening etc.) - with no relaxation of the diagram. But it's obviously not the same thing as the matsys design.
Here are some of my attempts of facet dome relaxation, but well, it's certainly still not the right approach, and most importantly I don't know how to keep or force the cells to be planar after the relaxation.
1. pulling vertices to a sphere - no anchor points. That obviously doesn't make sense at all, but the relaxation without anchor points gives at the beginning a pattern that is closer to what I am looking for. (files: relaxation 01)
2. pulling vertices to a sphere - two faces of the initial facet dome anchored (files: relaxation 02)
3. pulling vertices to the initial geometry (facet dome) no anchor points (files: relaxation 03)
The cell pattern of the lamp kinda looks like this:
You can find it here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/kangaroo-0-095-releasedgroupUrl=kangaroo&x=1&groupId=2985220%3AGroup%3A120977&id=2985220%3ATopic%3A972434&page=2#comments
Done with Plankton (of course without the "gradient increase" appearance), but in fact not, I took a look at Daniel Parker's Plankton example files, and it's not quite the same thing. Also the cells aren't planar...
The last problem is that during the relaxation attempts that I did, the biggest initial cells became enormous, and it's not like that in the elegant project by Andrew Kudless, that I'd like to achieve.
So to sum up:
Goal no 1: Obtain an elegant voronoi /facet dome cell pattern on a sphere (or an ellipsoid surface, whatever).
Goal no 2: How to keep the cells planar in order to be able to loft them later, obtain those pyramidal forms, and assemble easily
Have you got any ideas? Or maybe there's a completely different approach to that?
Cheers, and thanks in advance…
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).
…
This blog post is a rough approximation of the lecture I gave at the AAG10 conference in Vienna on September 21st 2010. Naturally it will be quite a different experience as the medium is quite…
Added by David Rutten at 3:27pm on September 24, 2010