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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me logic produced by running the 2-d voronoi component.
From a given set of polylines we can extract the centers and this can drive both the voronoi component as well as provide the XYZ drill points for the cnc. The definition has a variety of different options. You need Lunchbox, Weaverbird, and Starling. I can't tell you how amazing these 3 tools are from a design perspective. They are extremely powerful so if you don't have these you must install them asap. You can get the tools at http://www.food4rhino.com/
This definition works by first choosing a grid type, next you choose voronoi type, and subdivision type. From the voronoi type list you can choose basic (just grid), truncation (uses truncation calculated via the image sampler), truncation dual (uses the dual of the truncated image based grid), and subdivision (takes the basic grid type and uses different subdivision shcemes). Each of these provide different patterns of polylines from which we can extract our drilling points. I am rather proud of this definition since the overall idea is one which is so simple it's easy to overlook - the idea that drilling with a ball end mill makes voronoi plots. Now when you combine that with all of these amazing tools it can go off right quick. The nice thing is the paatern you see on screen is the pattern that gets made by drilling wysiwyg cnc patterns.
VORONIO_DRILLing.gh
Here are some on screen patterns in process in the following order truncation, basic, subdivision:
here is a video moving over a machined example:
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I had updated the components a few weeks ago but then got too lazy/busy to properly document that anywhere. Some of the additional features are:
1. It is now possible to substitute an IES file with a text string. For example one can paste the contents of an IES file into a text panel and connect that to the input for _iesFilePath. Alternatively, you can read a text file using the native Grasshopper "Read File" component, then embed (and internalize) that information inside the "Text" component.
So, either of the below two options will(should) qualify as an input for the _iesFilePath:
This makes it possible to embed IES data inside a GrassHopper file, thus doing away with the need for connecting to a file on a local drive.
2. I created a new component called Honeybee_IES Project which does the following:
1. It consolidates all the electric lighting RAD files for a simulation in one place. The single radFilePaths output from the component can be connected to the daylight simulation instead of connecting individual radFilePath outputs from every luminaire.
2. It creates a BOQ and luminaire schedule for all the luminaires used in the simulation. The schedule can either be viewed in a Grasshopper text panel or exported as excel.
The values for LLF, Candela Multiplier and Lamp Depreciation factor are printed out for each luminaire.
The effect of the multipliers on power consumption can be seen in the BOQ in the Total Power column:
Adding lumens to the output will be minor fix. I will update that within a few days.
I think the point-grid for the photometric and peak candela display are a great idea. I will add that functionality within a couple of weeks.
Are you implying the inclusion Type B photometry by "support for all ies file types" ? If so, that has been on my to-do list for a while. It might, however, be a while before I can get to it as it would require writing a convertor from Type C to Type B so that it can be visualized as a photometric mesh inside the Rhino viewport. I think the hackish way to get Type B photometry to work in Honeybee is to first convert the Type B photometry to Type C using something like the Photometric Toolbox.
Finally, the electric lighting components were initially written as a hack and they are still pretty much work-in-progress. I agree that calling the simulation a lighting simulation and adding separate inputs for electric lights would be a cleaner way of approaching these simulations. Mostapaha and I weren't sure of the traction that these new features might get. Based on the feedback received we will be simplifying and enhancing these components and the workflow to do electric lighting simulations.
(PS: Although I have heard a lot about Accelerad, due to the lack of compatible resources, I have never run a gpu-based simulation myself. I am not sure if Nathaniel requires additional flags or information to run Radiance simulations through Accelerad. If not, it should be possible to use files written through Honeybee to run Accelerad simulations. I will defer to Mostapha on the possibility of incorporating Accelerad in the Honeybee project).
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ut am trying to force myself to use it in all my projects so I can learn a little more each time.
I was lucky enough to get hold of a set of points depicting the site topography which have around 60m variance throughout the site, and have used this to generate a mesh giving me a surface. What i'd like to do is use this to create a load of layers trimmed to the mesh, then lay them out and number then so I can nest them and laser cut them.
I have seen plenty of waffle but I need to do this in a horizontal only layers which stack and i'm not entirely sure how to approach this. So far I created a bounding box and then measured the distance between the top and the bottom point to subdivide into the thickness of the material I have but then I became stuck, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time,
Richard.…
Added by Richard Gwilt at 1:37am on October 16, 2013
me" module. Strangely enough, the multi-threaded one runs remarkably slower, whereas the order of the printed results is senseless. Does anybody have experience on how to make it work properly? Already checked the post here.
import System.Threading.Tasks as tasks import time, math
#single-threaded
start = time.time() for i in range(1,501): print i end = time.time() print "single = ", end-start
#multi-threaded
iterations = 500 def get_i(i): print i start = time.time() tasks.Parallel.ForEach(xrange(iterations), get_i) end = time.time() print "multi = ", end-start
1. As (a) the values are printed in random order and (b) the computing time is high, are there any clues what i am doing wrong?
2. Is there a more accurate way to compute the required time for a command or a chunk of a script?
Thanks and best,
jnm
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complicated than it seems as I have an event and a subscriber method receiving data from a serial port.
In the code below, the strings received within myReceivedLines appear when connecting with the serial port (when connecttodevice is true). However they disapear when I launch another command (when homeallis true).
As you recommended in your reply, I have added the field called myReceivedLineswithin the class so that I could use the method String.Add() to all the feedback received and commands sent.
Why does the feedback dispear when a command is sent? Is the string going to myReceivedLine disappearing because they happen within a subscriber method or is it related to the DA.SetDataList() method used to assign myReceivedLinesto the output?
Many thanks!
public class SendToPrintComponent : GH_Component { //Fields List<string> myReceivedLines = new List<string>(); SerialPort port; //subscriber method for the port.DataReceived Event private void DataReceivedHandler(object sender, System.IO.Ports.SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e) { SerialPort sp = (SerialPort)sender; while (sp.BytesToRead > 0) { try { myReceivedLines.Add(sp.ReadLine()); } catch (TimeoutException) { break; } } } protected override void SolveInstance(IGH_DataAccess DA) { //Opening the port if (port == null) { string selectedportname = default(string); DA.GetData(1, ref selectedportname); int selectedbaudrate = default(int); DA.GetData(2, ref selectedbaudrate); //Assigning an object to the field within the SolveInstance method() port = new SerialPort(selectedportname, selectedbaudrate, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One); //Enables the data terminal ready (dtr) signal during serial communication (handshaking) port.DtrEnable = true; port.WriteTimeout = 500; port.ReadTimeout = 500; } //Event Handling Method bool connecttodevice = default(bool); DA.GetData(3, ref connecttodevice); if (connecttodevice == true) { if (!port.IsOpen) { port.DataReceived += new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(DataReceivedHandler); DA.SetDataList(0, myReceivedLines); port.Open(); } } else if (port.IsOpen) { port.DataReceived -= new SerialDataReceivedEventHandler(DataReceivedHandler); port.Close(); } if (port.IsOpen) { DA.SetData(1, "Port Open"); } //If the port is open do all the rest if (port.IsOpen) { bool homeall = default(bool); DA.GetData(5, ref homeall); //Home all sends all the axis to the origin if (homeall == true) { port.Write("G28" + "\n"); myReceivedLines.Add("G28" + "\n"); DA.SetDataList(2, myReceivedLines); } } else { DA.SetData(1, "Port Closed"); } }}…
t. So here we go!
1. Honeybee is brown and not yellow [stupid!]...
As you probably remember Honeybee logo was initially yellow because of my ignorance about Honeybees. With the help of our Honeybee expert, Michalina, now the color is corrected. I promised her to update everyone about this. Below are photos of her working on the honeybee logo and the results of her study.
If you think I'm exaggerating by calling her a honeybee expert you better watch this video:
Thank you Michalina for the great work! :). I corrected the colors. No yellow anymore. The only yellow arrows represent sun rays and not the honeybee!
2. Yellow or brown, W[here]TH Honeybee is?
I know. It has been a long time after I posted the initial video and it is not fun at all to wait for a long time. Here is the good news. If you are following the Facebook page you probably now that the Daylighting components are almost ready.
Couple of friends from Grasshopper community and RADIANCE community has been helping me with testing/debugging the components. I still think/hope to release the daylighting components at some point in January before Ladybug gets one year old.
There have been multiple changes. I finally feel that the current version of Honeybee is simple enough for non-expert users to start running initial studies and flexible enough for advanced users to run advanced studies. I will post a video soon and walk you through different components.
I think I still need more time to modify the energy simulation components so they are not going to be part of the next release. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to set up and run a wrong energy simulation and I really don’t want to add one new GIGO app to the world of simulation. We already have enough of that. Moreover I’m still not quite happy with the workflow. Please bear with me for few more months and then we can all celebrate!
I recently tested the idea of connecting Grasshopper to OpenStudio by using OpenStudio API successfully. If nothing else, I really want to release the EnergyPlus components so I can concentrate on Grasshopper > OpenStudio development which I personally think is the best approach.
3. What about wind analysis?
I have been asked multiple times that if Ladybug will have a component for wind study. The short answer is YES! I have been working with EFRI-PULSE project during the last year to develop a free and open source web-based CFD simulation platform for outdoor analysis.
We had a very good progress so far and our rockstar Stefan recently presented the results of the work at the American Physical Society’s 66th annual DFD meeting and the results looks pretty convincing in comparison to measured data. Here is an image from the presentation. All the credits go to Stefan Gracik and EFRI-PULSE project.
The project will go live at some point next year and after that I will release the Butterfly which will let you prepare the model for the CFD simulation and send it to EFRI-PULSE project. I haven’t tried to run the simulations locally yet but I’m considering that as a further development. Here is how the component and the logo looks like right now.
4. Teaching resources
It has been almost 11 months from the first public release of Ladybug. I know that I didn't do a good job in providing enough tutorials/teaching materials and I know that I won’t be able to put something comprehensive together soon.
Fortunately, ladybug has been flying in multiple schools during the last year. Several design, engineering and consultant firms are using it and it has been thought in several workshops. As I checked with multiple of you, almost everyone told me that they will be happy to share their teaching materials; hence I started the teaching resources page. Please share your materials on the page. They can be in any format and any language. Thanks in advance!
I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying/will enjoy the longest night of the year. Happy Yalda!
Cheers,
-Mostapha
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