he last nights, let me try to describe it:-disclaimer: I'm an industrial designer, my coding experience can be compared to your, when you were 4 year old :)-disclaimer 2: I did a picture at the end of the post that maybe explains more than my words
the component has 2 inputs (Start Value, End Value) and one output (Picked Value)
this phantomatic component (which I would refere to as "dynamic value picker") supports any amount of domains on every input -> it works as if they come grafted, from a "longest list" component
The component "at rest" shows only one slider -with question marks on both edges-
For every couple on inputs you connect (1 Start Value connection + 1 End Value connection) it would visually generate a new slider (exactly like a "number slider" component)main difference from the "number slider" component, this one would show the Start Value and End Value numbers at the edges of each thus generated slider
Right click -> edit on it would recall a window similar to the "number slider", with the main difference that only the first part of those options would be present (see attached image for clarity)Whatever slide accuracy you set, it will affect the whole "dinamic value picker" phantom component (if you set "integer numbers" and for any reason one or more inputs are "floating points numbers", the component automatically rounds the inputs to the best "Integer", and allows you only to pick integer numbers in-between)
If you suddenly change a "Start Value" or an "End Value" input, the affected slider/sliders in the component will try to stay as close as possible to the same % value they were before (example if the domain was from 5 to 11, integers only, and you first picked the value 8, the slider was exactly in position 50%: when you change the End Value domain to 21 the slider will set itself to 13 - yes, I picked an easy one lol )
When you first plug a couple of Start Value + End Value, the slider sets itself to Picked Value = Start Value
It could also be possible to supply negative values as Value End and positive values as Value Start: the slider let you pick a number on that domain regardless of the numerical order you use
Last thing, but it's just fancy imagination, if you zoom-in the output (Picked Value) connection dot, a little - and + appears (like in other common components), letting you add a new cursor to every existing slider (it could be possible to customize the color of the new cursor to avoid confusion)
This is the exact description of what I would ask to the lamp genie :)
I attach a pic I just did, in the hope to better explain myself: picture link
and of course thank you again for reading this long poem!
…
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 !
…
t file** - ply file with just x,y,z locations. I got it from a 3d scanner. Here is how first few lines of file looks like - ply format ascii 1.0 comment VCGLIB generated element vertex 6183 property float x property float y property float z end_header -32.3271 -43.9859 11.5124 -32.0631 -43.983 11.4945 12.9266 -44.4913 28.2031 13.1701 -44.4918 28.2568 13.4138 -44.4892 28.2531 13.6581 -44.4834 28.1941 13.9012 -44.4851 28.2684 ... ... ... In case you need the data - please email me on **nisha.m234@gmail.com**. **Algorithm:** I am trying to find principal curvatures for extracting the ridges and valleys. The steps I am following is: 1. Take a point x 2. Find its k nearest neighbors. I used k from 3 to 20. 3. average the k nearest neighbors => gives (_x, _y, _z) 4. compute covariance matrix 5. Now I take eigen values and eigen vectors of this covariance matrix 6. I get u, v and n here from eigen vectors. u is a vector corresponding to largest eigen value v corresponding to 2nd largest n is 3rd smallest vector corresponding to smallest eigen value 7. Then for transforming the point(x,y,z) I compute matrix T T = [ui ] [u ] [x - _x] [vi ] = [v ] x [y - _y] [ni ] [n ] [z - _z] 8. for each i of the k nearest neighbors:<br> [ n1 ] [u1*u1 u1*v1 v1*v1] [ a ]<br> [ n2 ] = [u2*u2 u2*v2 v2*v2] [ b ] <br> [... ] [ ... ... ... ] [ c ] <br> [ nk ] [uk*uk uk*vk vk*vk]<br> Solve this for a, b and c with least squares 9. this equations will give me a,b,c 10. now I compute eigen values of matrix [a b b a ] 11. This will give me 2 eigen values. one is Kmin and another Kmax. **My Problem:** The output is no where close to finding the correct Ridges and Valleys. I am totally Stuck and frustrated. I am not sure where exactly I am getting it wrong. I think the normal's are not computed correctly. But I am not sure. I am very new to graphics programming and so this maths, normals, shaders go way above my head. Any help will be appreciated. **PLEASE PLEASE HELP!!** **Resources:** I am using Visual Studio 2010 + Eigen Library + ANN Library. **Other Options used** I tried using MeshLab. I used ball pivoting triangles remeshing in MeshLab and then applied the polkadot3d shader. If correctly identifies the ridges and valleys. But I am not able to code it. **My Function:** //the function outputs to ply file void getEigen() { int nPts; // actual number of data points ANNpointArray dataPts; // data points ANNpoint queryPt; // query point ANNidxArray nnIdx;// near neighbor indices ANNdistArray dists; // near neighbor distances ANNkd_tree* kdTree; // search structure //for k = 25 and esp = 2, seems to got few ridges queryPt = annAllocPt(dim); // allocate query point dataPts = annAllocPts(maxPts, dim); // allocate data points nnIdx = new ANNidx[k]; // allocate near neigh indices dists = new ANNdist[k]; // allocate near neighbor dists nPts = 0; // read data points ifstream dataStream; dataStream.open(inputFile, ios::in);// open data file dataIn = &dataStream; ifstream queryStream; queryStream.open("input/query.
pts", ios::in);// open data file queryIn = &queryStream; while (nPts < maxPts && readPt(*dataIn, dataPts[nPts])) nPts++; kdTree = new ANNkd_tree( // build search structure dataPts, // the data points nPts, // number of points dim); // dimension of space while (readPt(*queryIn, queryPt)) // read query points { kdTree->annkSearch( // search queryPt, // query point k, // number of near neighbors nnIdx, // nearest neighbors (returned) dists, // distance (returned) eps); // error bound double x = queryPt[0]; double y = queryPt[1]; double z = queryPt[2]; double _x = 0.0; double _y = 0.0; double _z = 0.0; #pragma region Compute covariance matrix for (int i = 0; i < k; i++) { _x += dataPts[nnIdx[i]][0]; _y += dataPts[nnIdx[i]][1]; _z += dataPts[nnIdx[i]][2]; } _x = _x/k; _y = _y/k; _z = _z/k; double A[3][3] = {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0}; for (int i = 0; i < k; i++) { double X = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][0]; double Y = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][1]; double Z = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][2]; A[0][0] += (X-_x) * (X-_x); A[0][1] += (X-_x) * (Y-_y); A[0][2] += (X-_x) * (Z-_z); A[1][0] += (Y-_y) * (X-_x); A[1][1] += (Y-_y) * (Y-_y); A[1][2] += (Y-_y) * (Z-_z); A[2][0] += (Z-_z) * (X-_x); A[2][1] += (Z-_z) * (Y-_y); A[2][2] += (Z-_z) * (Z-_z); } MatrixXd C(3,3); C <<A[0][0]/k, A[0][1]/k, A[0][2]/k, A[1][0]/k, A[1][1]/k, A[1][2]/k, A[2][0]/k, A[2][1]/k, A[2][2]/k; #pragma endregion EigenSolver<MatrixXd> es(C); MatrixXd Eval = es.eigenvalues().real().asDiagonal(); MatrixXd Evec = es.eigenvectors().real(); MatrixXd u,v,n; double a = Eval.row(0).col(0).value(); double b = Eval.row(1).col(1).value(); double c = Eval.row(2).col(2).value(); #pragma region SET U V N if(a>b && a>c) { u = Evec.row(0); if(b>c) { v = Eval.row(1); n = Eval.row(2);} else { v = Eval.row(2); n = Eval.row(1);} } else if(b>a && b>c) { u = Evec.row(1); if(a>c) { v = Eval.row(0); n = Eval.row(2);} else { v = Eval.row(2); n = Eval.row(0);} } else { u = Eval.row(2); if(a>b) { v = Eval.row(0); n = Eval.row(1);} else { v = Eval.row(1); n = Eval.row(0);} } #pragma endregion MatrixXd O(3,3); O <<u, v, n; MatrixXd UV(k,3); VectorXd N(k,1); for( int i=0; i<k; i++) { double x = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][0];; double y = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][1];; double z = dataPts[nnIdx[i]][2];; MatrixXd X(3,1); X << x-_x, y-_y, z-_z; MatrixXd T = O * X; double ui = T.row(0).col(0).value(); double vi = T.row(1).col(0).value(); double ni = T.row(2).col(0).value(); UV.row(i) << ui * ui, ui * vi, vi * vi; N.row(i) << ni; } Vector3d S = UV.colPivHouseholderQr().solve(N); MatrixXd II(2,2); II << S.row(0).value(), S.row(1).value(), S.row(1).value(), S.row(2).value(); EigenSolver<MatrixXd> es2(II); MatrixXd Eval2 = es2.eigenvalues().real().asDiagonal(); MatrixXd Evec2 = es2.eigenvectors().real(); double kmin, kmax; if(Eval2.row(0).col(0).value() < Eval2.row(1).col(1).value()) { kmin = Eval2.row(0).col(0).value(); kmax = Eval2.row(1).col(1).value(); } else { kmax = Eval2.row(0).col(0).value(); kmin = Eval2.row(1).col(1).value(); } double thresh = 0.0020078; if (kmin < thresh && kmax > thresh ) cout << x << " " << y << " " << z << " " << 255 << " " << 0 << " " << 0 << endl; else cout << x << " " << y << " " << z << " " << 255 << " " << 255 << " " << 255 << endl; } delete [] nnIdx; delete [] dists; delete kdTree; annClose(); } Thanks, NISHA…
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
…
nts for Ladybug too. They are based on PVWatts v1 online calculator, supporting crystalline silicon fixed tilt photovoltaics.
You can download them from here, or use the Update Ladbybug component instead. If you take the first option, after downloading check if .ghuser files are blocked (right click -> "Properties" and select "Unblock").
You can download the example files from here.
Video tutorials will follow in the coming period.
In the very essence these components help you answer the question: "How much energy can my roof, building facade, solar parking... generate if I would populate them with PV panels"?
They allow definition of different types of losses (snow, age, shading...) which may affect your PV system:
And can find its optimal tilt and orientation:
Or analyse its performance, energy value, consumption, emissions...
By Djordje Spasic and Jason Sensibaugh, with invaluable support of Dr. Frank Vignola, Dr. Jason M. Keith, Paul Gilman, Chris Mackey, Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari, Niraj Palsule, Joseph Cunningham and Christopher Weiss.
Thank you for reading, and hope you will enjoy using the components!
EDIT: From march 27 2017, Ladybug Photovoltaics components support thin-film modules as well.
References:
1) System losses:
PVWatts v5 Manual, Dobos, NREL, 2014
2) Sun postion equations by Michalsky (1988):
SAM Photovoltaic Model Technical Reference, Gilman, NREL, 2014
edited by Jason Sensibaugh
3) Angle of incidence for fixed arrays:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
4) Plane-of-Array diffuse irradiance by Perez 1990 algorithm:
PVPMC Sandia National Laboratories
SAM Photovoltaic Model Technical Reference, Gilman, NREL, 2014
5) Sandia PV Array Performance Module Cover:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
6) Sandia Thermal Model, Module Temperature and Cell Temperature Models:
Photovoltaic Array Performance Model, King, Boys, Kratochvill, Sandia National Laboratories, 2004
7) CEC Module Model: Maximum power voltage and Maximum power current from:
Exact analytical solutions of the parameters of real solar cells using Lambert W-function, Jain, Kapoor, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, V81 2004, P269–277
8) PVFORM version 3.3 adapted Module and Inverter Models:
PVWatts Version 1 Technical Reference, Dobos, NREL, 2013
9) Sunpath diagram shading:
Using sun path charts to estimate the effects of shading on PV arrays, Frank Vignola, University of Oregon, 2004
Instruction manual for the Solar Pathfinder, Solar Pathfinder TM, 2008
10) Tilt and orientation factor:
Application for Purchased Systems Oregon Department of Energy
solmetric.com
11) Photovoltaics performance metrics:
Solar PV system performance assessment guideline, Honda, Lechner, Raju, Tolich, Mokri, San Jose state university, 2012
CACHE Modules on Energy in the Curriculum Solar Energy, Keith, Palsule, Mississippi State University
Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) Version 2.0, Hammond, Jones, SERT University of Bath, 2011
The Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) of Photovoltaics: Methodology and Comparisons with Fossil Fuel Life Cycles, Raugei, Fullana-i-Palmer, Fthenakis, Elsevier Vol 45, Jun 2012
12) Calculating albedo: Metenorm 6 Handbook part II: Theory, Meteotest 2007
13) Magnetic declination:
Geomag 0.9.2015, Christopher Weiss…
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.
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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…