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Chris Mackey, MIT Graduate Researcher and Payette Building Scientist has released details about the highly anticipated Spring 2017 Ladybug + Honeybee workshop series taught as live webinars with hands on demonstration and example files.
The Spring 2017 will deliver entirely new content as it builds upon Fall 2016 workshops which were recorded.
Spring 2017 Workshops Details
High-Quality Graphics, Visualizations and Animations with Ladybug
Using early-design sun studies as an example, participants will learn a range of techniques for generating high-quality graphics with Ladybug. In addition to the Legend Parameters component that is used by all visual Ladybug components (setting fonts, colors, boundaries), the session with show how to orient legends and other geometry to the camera, orient the camera to view vectors and sun positions, generate custom color meshes with your own data, and visualize the regions of meshes that meet conditional statements. Finally, the session will demonstrate good practices for exporting to different formats including raster/vector formats (png/pdf/ai), screenshot animations, and rendered animations. Content will be at a beginner level but there will be plenty of tricks for the experts.
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Brute Force Parametric Energy Modeling and Sensitivity Analyses in Early Design
Where should the funds for a building be invested? In the HVAC or the building envelope? In a better window U-Value or a better window shade system? Arguably, the most design-altering application of energy modeling in today's world is sensitivity analysis, which helps answer these early design questions by testing the relative importance of competing variables. This session will show how to answer these questions in early design with the setup of small parametric energy models in Ladybug+Honeybee. Participants will learn how to automate the simulating of all combinations of these parameters and will visualize results in two interfaces: the open source web platform, Design Explorer, and the standalone desktop software, Tableau.
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Wintertime Indoor Thermal Comfort Visualization - Eliminating Perimeter Heat with High-Performing Facades
While the building industry has traditionally addressed wintertime discomfort near glazing through the application of perimeter heating elements, recent interest in energy efficiency and comfort has challenged this practice with a powerful question: What facade properties would provide warm enough interior surface temperatures to fully mitigate thermal discomfort and merit the removal of perimeter heat? Research has revealed that there are many combinations of contemporary insulated glazing assemblies and window geometries that satisfy the strictest thermal comfort standards on their own. This has opened opportunities for energy use savings, maintenance + HVAC cost savings, and generally simpler, sleeker building designs. This session will show two methods for assessing wintertime comfort in the absence of perimeter heat: one that is web-based for fast order-of-magnitude comparisons, and another that uses Ladybug to evaluate more complex spatial and temporal conditions. Both full-body radiant discomfort and discomfort from cold downdrafts will be modeled and quantified.
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Summertime Indoor Thermal Comfort Visualization - Keeping Setpoints and Blinds Up with the Right Shade + Controls
The mitigation of discomfort in hot summertime conditions remains one of the greatest sources of occupant dissatisfaction and energy waste in contemporary buildings. Most of us can recall experiences of overly-cold indoor conditions in the height of summer but few understand how such cultural practices evolved, why they have been sustained, and how to change them. This session will explain the origin of some of these practices using a simple Honeybee energy model along with Ladybug thermal comfort models and graphics. Several methods for improving these practices will be proposed, simulated, visualized and explained, including several control strategies (ie, collective user-driven setpoints, warmer air with individual desk fans), along with building envelope strategies (automated shades, electrochromic glass, frit, exterior overhangs/louvers, etc.)
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Condensation Modeling with Honeybee
As we harness technologies such as humidity control, air-and-vapor barriers, and radiant slabs, we?ve realized a number of benefits in functionality and/or energy use. However, these technologies have spawned new problems as they increase the potential for condensation, which can generate mold, slippery floors, and other undesirable situations. This session will demonstrate two methods for evaluating condensation risk using Ladybug and Honeybee: 1) Using THERM to understand where in an envelope condensation can happen and 2) Using EnergyPlus to understand when condensation can happen over a year. These methods will help answer questions such as ?where should the air and vapor barrier go for construction detail in a given climate??, ?are natural ventilation and cooled radiant slabs compatible for a given climate?? and ?How insulated must a window be to prevent wintertime condensation for a humidified interior??
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Urban Heat Island Modeling with Dragonfly
Global warming; urban heat island; weather variations from large water bodies and high altitude. All of these factors can affect a given climate and yet they operate on a scale so large that we don?t know their relative magnitude or even think of them as measurable phenomena. This session will introduce the Dragonfly plugin, which was built to help understand these large-scale climate variations. Specifically, this session will show how to warp epw weather files to account for urban heat island - the condition where an urban area is a few degrees warmer than the surrounding rural area. Using city geometry in Rhino, the Dragonfly plugin, and the Urban Weather Generator engine, we will alter an existing rural epw to account for the heat island of the city. The resulting files can be used for more accurate energy simulations and outdoor comfort analysis. They can also help test strategies to optimize the heat island for greater outdoor comfort in developing cities.
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Expanding Your Climate Data Sources with Dragonfly
This session will cover the creation of actual mean year (AMY) epw weather files from any of the thousands of public weather stations located on this global map: https://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/map/viewer/#app=cdo&cfg=cdo&theme=hourly&layers=1&node=gis. Participants will use this database, existing TMY data, and the Dragonfly plugin for Grasshopper to create weather files for atypical locations and extreme years. These weather files will expand uses of EPW data to new topics such as passive survivability during extreme events, comparison of different urban microclimates, and much more. If Dragonfly?s climate change capabilities are completed by the time of this workshop, this session will also show how to warp epw climate data to account for climate change projections.
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CFD Simulation with OpenFOAM, Rhino/Grasshopper and Butterfly (ADVANCED)
Participants will be guided through the process of setting up and simulating a case of outdoor wind patterns using OpenFOAM, a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) engine. The session will start with a brief review of the Ladybug Wind Rose and Wind Profile but will move quickly to the Butterfly plugin, which helps mesh the geometry, set wind tunnel properties, and exports everything to the OpenFOAM CFD Engine engine (the only validated open source CFD software to date). Note the Butterfly plugin is new and the learning curve for CFD is steep. Experience with Grasshopper, Ladybug and CFD is strongly recommended.
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