ally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way. Simply stated, the definition of a recursive function includes the function itself. Fractals are among the canonical examples of recursion in mathematics and programming. A loop can simply be a way to apply the same operation to a list of elements, but it is an iterative loop if the results from one step are used in the calculation of the next step. In design research controlling recursion becomes a new strategy to define new forms and spaces.
BRIEF
In this workshop we will be exploring iterative strategies through parametric design. Main tool for the course will be grasshopper3d and its add-on Anemone. Anemone is a simple but effective plug-in for Grasshopper that enables for loops in a simple and linear way. We will explore several strategies such iterative growth, L systems, fractals, recursive subdivisions and more. Our course will focus on how those methods can affect three-dimensional geometries, generating unexpected conformations.
TOPICS
intro to rhinointro to grasshopperadvanced grasshopperdata managementintro to loopscellular automatal-systemsagent based modelling
SCHEDULE
Day 1 / friday 16:00Tour Green Fab LabBasics of 3D modeling in RhinocerosBasics of GrasshopperOpen Lecture by Jan Pernecky, founder of rese arch
Day 2 / saturday 10 am- 18 pmRecursive iterative methodsAdvanced Topics of looping
Day 3 / sunday 10 am – 18 pmRecursive iterative methodsFinal presentation session
REQUIREMENTS
The workshop is open to all participants, no previous knowledge of Rhinoceros and Grasshopper is required (although an introductory knowledge is welcome). Participants should bring their own laptop with a pre-installed software. The software package needed has no additional cost for the participant (Rhino can be downloaded as evaluation version, Grasshopper and plugins are free). These softwares are subject to frequent updates, so a download link to the version used in the workshop will be sent to the participants a few days before the workshop.…
Added by Aldo Sollazzo at 11:10am on October 6, 2015
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…
st variety of papers (mostly related with LIDAR airborne sampled clouds) ... but ... hmm ... no code (other than some "abstract" algos that may (or may not) work). Reason? A very hot cake that one these days: from reverse engineering to DARPA founded future defense systems and up to cruse missiles pattern recognition algos.
The solution (obviously doable only via code) is the so called flat hard clustering ... were points are sampled into clusters based on the coPlanarity "rule". For large amounts recursive octTrees (an oriented box divided in 8 "partitions") subdivisions are used and then pts are processed in parallel (and then clusters are re-evaluated in order to "absorb" other clusters with same plane A,B,C,D vars etc etc).
See what's happening in a very carefully made test point collection:
3.7 ms and the "ideal" clustering (7 search loops VS the max 42M theoretical threshold):
Depending on the pts "preparation" ... a considerable more time/search loops is required ... and ... well ... also "valid" clusters (4 points and up) made:
So "ideally" speaking in your case:
1. Mesh faces center points (or alternatively: mesh vertices) are sampled into a pts collection .
2. Hard flat coPlanarity clustering is attempted yielding pts/planes in equivalent DataTrees.
3. Planar Breps are made with respect the planes (like the black things captured above) and sampled, say, into a breps List.
4. The method Brep[] solids = Brep.CreateSolid(breps); is used for attempting to create your desired "engulfing" brep. This method is very slow mind (other waaaay faster approaches also available).
…
to run at full screen. I've gone as far as using an iPad to use as the second monitor via AirDisplay (which actually works really well) but have never been satisfied with any setup that required you to look back and forth as if at a tennis match all day long.
Not long after first using Grasshopper 3+ years ago I've had the desire for a "Live Viewport" component that would allow a live image of the 3d geometry being generated directly in the canvas. Every once in a while I search the forums with the hope of finding a solution, but always come up empty handed. Someday this might exist although for now I have found what might be the next best thing to a native "Live Viewport" component and its enabled with a small app named Sticky Previews. This app uses the task bar preview feature within Windows 7's aero interface to create custom, floating preview windows from any open window currently running. I've only just discovered the app, but it seems to do the trick and has been stable and problem free so far. -- I will post an update if I find out that I might have spoken too soon. The install allows for a 30 day trial and is $15 bucks to purchase. I just found the app and don't know anything about this group that created the app. If you happen to know of them, Id be curious to find out more.
divided windows, cramped and slow;
unified window with floating rhino model preview;
link to the apps webpage;
http://www.ntwind.com/software/sticky-previews.html
Also works with other apps;
and the about me page screen shot;
…
Added by Tyler Selby at 11:25pm on November 26, 2012
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…
cribes a set of machine movements in X, Y and Z (Z being Pen Up and Pen Down) directions. It very closely related to G-code in this way - just slightly more simple than G-code overall.
For tool selection you use the Select Pen - SPx - command, x is the number of the pen you are using. As I'm using a vinyl cutter without a pen/tool changer I just use SP1 in the file header/ini of the cutter.
Without knowing the full spec of your machine it is hard to say for certain BUT all of my experience with CNC machines - of all sizes and spec levels - the actual control files are pretty much the same. Very simple text based HPGL or G-code text files run all motion control - even on things like 7 axis robot arms etc. For plotting I'd expect you'd be able to get a usable HPGL/PLT file without a lot of work - its just a matter of matching the file to what the machine is expecting.
To answer your question about getting the file to the printer its maybe best to explain it this way: there are two parts to this project1/ Create the correctly formatted text/hpgl/plt file ready to send to the printer2/ Send the file to printer
For part 1/ the procedure is:
Select the curves you want to printConvert the curves into a set of pointsFormat these points into HPGL Save this HPGL as a text file
For 2/ we need a way to stream the text file to a printer port
To do this I've used an old dos command line technique that allows allow you to 'copy' a text file to a printer LPT or COM port:
copy /b c:\spool\ini.plt LPT1
Type the above into a DOS command line and it will send a text file called ini.plt to the printer on LPT1 port. As you'll see in my attached code I use os.system calls in my python code to send files when needed.
So your original code was doing some strange things with the conversion from curves to points. Lines/Polylines were OK - with the code just using the line end points. For curves and polycurves the code code was exploding these into segments and then dividing into set of points. However this led to two issues: - curves that started off as closed polycurves would end up being plotted as open curve segments - which is not very good for a cut file and not very smooth for a plot file.- the division of the curves to points was by distance - and if this wasn't an exact division of the length of the curve the end point would not match up with the next line - again not ideal for a cutting file which needs to be a closed curve.
To solve the above I changed to using rs.ConvertCurveToPolyline - with the tolerance set to match the HPGL resolution of 0.025mm - this converts all curves needed to plot to polylines, leaves everything closed and ends points line up perfectly.
I had one other problem with my setup - I ran into a file size/curve number/plotting points upper limit. A small number of curves would cut/plot fine, however at a certain number in one file the print driver would throw an error and the plotter would not even start plotting the file. I could not work out where is the system this limit was being imposed. The current working version of my code is attached - it gets around this file size limit by creating a separate print file for each curve required and sending them to the plotter in sequence. Not as completely tidy as I'd like as it flashes up a cmd window on every loop - but plots/cuts are perfect.
The final 'nice touch' for the project is I've created a custom tool bar button to run the script - all I have to do to cut a file is hit the button on the tool bar, select the curves and hit enter = SO EASY!
I've attached my latest code, a sample HPGL file to plot a rectangle, and a screen shot of setting up the custom toolbar button.
Cheers
DK…
try now to integrate Geco in an interdisciplinary architectural engineering studio: hoping we can show you some nice applications of your tool, I'll keep you update and sending now details by e-mail. Here the file (very welcome to be shared). It most probably contais trivial errors by me, thanks for helping and giving some tip! Gr. Michela
FILE:
Ok, right, I see the outputs update correctly. Origin of problems must be in some different mistake I do:
- Incident radiation: I am not sure I understand what is going on: why I get so many 'not a number' ? (The Galapagos report is full of NaNs).
Bio-Diversity: 0.887 Genome[0], Fitness=NaN, Genes [89% · 44%] { Record: Too many fitness values supplied } ...
Genome[7], Fitness=NaN, Genes [74%] { Record: No fitness value was supplied } ....
Genome[9], Fitness=NaN, Genes [37% · 11%] { Record: Genome was mutated to avoid collision Record: Too many fitness values supplied }
- Daylight calculations: the geometry accumulates withouth deleting the previous models. As a consequance, results almost do not change after few varations (so, outputs get updated but do not vary). In current daylight definition: the first object being imported is the one where the grid has to fit; its setting makes it cancelling all the other objects during import. All the others, do not delete anything when imported. When running loops (manual or GA) that vary parameters, the entire geometry do not get cancelled - so I guess the loop does not pass back by the cancelling step, but imports only the geometry which has been varied by the parameters using the setting of that import component only? I will then try again by changing the order of the operations, but if you have specfic tips, let me know.
THANKS!
…
eration!
See an example work flow for designing, simulating and analysing a Photovoltaic system below.
Download a Grasshopper and Rhino example file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/krbszlplj5i40dz/017_HBgeneration%20Rhino%20model.3dm?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxneuzal3mipd2q/017_HBgeneration.gh?dl=0
See a quick introduction and tutorial videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrx2KnyhaJ5YXo5hpk8Q9q4Vy99O5IegK
1. Select a building to mount a photovoltaic generator on (seen in Rhino in green).
2. Select a surface within that building to mount a photovoltaic generator on (seen in Rhino in green).
3. Create a Honeybee context surface from that surface.
4. Place a photovoltaic generator on that Honeybee context surface by using the Honeybee generation component. Honeybee_Generator_PV and connecting the context surface to it's input _HBSurfaces. Then you can specify both the performance and the financial data of the photovoltaic generator.
5. Create a Honeybee generation system which consists of the photovoltaic generator in 4. By using the component Honeybee_generationsystem and connecting 4 to its input PVHBSurfaces_. Then you can specify the annual maintenance cost of this system.
6. Run the simulation in Energy Plus by connecting 5. to the input HBGenerators_.
7. Read the results of the simulation:
- The electricity produced by the Honeybee generation system in 5.
- The net purchased electricity of the facility (the Honeybee zone) to which the Honeybee generation system is attached to. This is the electricity consumed by the facility less the electricity generated by the Honeybee generation system.
- The financial costs of the Honeybee generation system; capital, maintenance and replacement costs.
8. Calculate the net present cost of the Honeybee generation system in 5 assuming a 25 year lifetime.
9. Visualise the net present cost.
…
will work slightly different from before. Sorry about breaking this, but it proved impossible to improve the selection logic with the fairly ambiguous notation that was implemented already.
Not every change is breaking though and I hope that most simple matching rules will work as before. There will be a McNeel webinar on Wednesday the 6th of November where I discuss the new selection rules (as well as path mapping syntax and relative offsets within one or more data trees). This will be a pretty hard-core webinar aimed at expert users. The event will be recorded so you can always go and watch it later. I figured I'd briefly explain the new selection rules on Ning before I release the update though.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imagine we have the following data tree, containing a bunch of textual characters:
{0;0} = [a,e,i,o,u,y] {0;1} = [ä,ë,ê,ï,î,ö,ô,õ,ü,û,ÿ,ý] {1;0} = [b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,z] {1;1} = [ç,ĉ,č,ĝ,ř,š,ş,ž]
There are a total of four branches {0;0}, {0;1}, {1;0} and {1;1}. The first branch contains all the vowels that are part of the standard English alphabet. The second branch contains all non-standard vowels and branches three and four contain the standard and non-standard consonants respectively.
So what if we want to select from this tree only the standard vowels? Basically include everything in the first branch and disregard everything else. We can use the [Tree Split] component with a selection rule to achieve this:
{0;0}
This selection rule hard-codes the number zero in both tree path locations. It doesn't define an item index rule, so all items in {0;0} will be selected.
If we want all the vowels (both standard and non-standard), then we have several options:
{0;?} = select all branches that start with 0
{0;(0,1)} = select all branches that start with 0 and end in either 0 or 1
{0;(0 to 1)} = ......................................... and end in the range 0 to 1.
Conversely, selecting all standard vowels and consonants while disregarding all non-standard character can be achieved with rules as follows:
{?;0}
{(0,1);0}
{(0 to 1);0}
It is also possible to select items from each branch in addition to limiting the selection to specific branches. In this case another rule stated in square brackets needs to be appended:
{0;?}[0 to 2]
The above rule will select the first three vowels from the standard and the non-standard lists.
Basically, rules work in a very consistent way, but there are some syntax conventions you need to know. The first thing to realize is that every individual piece of data in a data-tree can be uniquely and unambiguously identified by a collection of integers. One integer describes its index within the branch and the others are used to identify the branch within the tree. As a result a rule for selection items always looks the same:
{A;B;C;...;Z}[i] where A, B, C, Z and i represent rules.
It's very similar to the Path Mapper syntax except it uses square brackets instead of parenthesis for the index (the Path Mapper will follow suit soon, but that won't be a breaking change). You always have to define the path selector rule in between curly brackets. You can supply any number of rules as long as you separate them with semi-colons.
The index rule is optional, but -when provided- it has to be encased in square brackets after the path selection rule(s).
The following rule notations are allowed:
* Any number of integers in a path
? Any single integer
6 Any specific integer
!6 Anything except a specific integer
(2,6,7) Any one of the specific integers in this group.
!(2,6,7) Anything except one of the integers in this group.
(2 to 20) Any integer in this range (including both 2 and 20).
!(2 to 20) Any integer outside this range.
(0,2,...) Any integer part of this infinite sequence. Sequences have to be at least two integers long, and every subsequent integer has to be bigger than the previous one (sorry, that may be a temporary limitation, don't know yet).
(0,2,...,48) Any integer part of this finite sequence. You can optionally provide a single sequence limit after the three dots.
!(3,5,...) Any integer not part of this infinite sequence. The sequence doesn't extend to the left, only towards the right. So this rule would select the numbers 0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and all remaining even numbers.
!(7,10,21,...,425) Any integer not part of this finite sequence.
Furthermore, it is possible to combine two or more rules using the boolean and/or operators. If you want to select the first five items in every list of a datatree and also the items 7, 12 and 42, then the selection rule would look as follows:
{*}[(0 to 4) or (6,11,41)]
The asterisk allows you to include all branches, no matter what their paths looks like.
It is at present not possible to use the parenthesis to define rule precedence, rules are always evaluated from left to right. It is at present also not possible to use negative integers to identify items from the end of a list.
If you want to know more, join the Webinar on Wednesday!
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA…
Added by David Rutten at 8:57pm on November 3, 2013