Are Honeybee/Dragonfly the right tools for me?

Hey All, I’m looking to work on a little test project, and I was hoping to get a little feedback from people who know what they’re doing before get too far in and realize the tooling just isn’t there yet.

I want to run a variety of parametric simulations to see the impact of various EEMs and how they relate to each other. For instance, some of the variables I might want to try out in a variety of combinations are:

  • High shell to volume ratio (e.g. + shaped) vs low shell to volume ratio (rectangle) vs all internal spaces (rectangle with adiabatic walls)
  • High vs low window to wall ratio
  • Various sized spaces (2,000sf, 10,000sf, 25,000sf)
  • School vs office vs hospital building types
  • No/light/aggressive supply temperature resets
  • No/light/aggressive scheduling

I know I need to be careful as the parametric space will go up exponentially as I add terms, so I’ll need to strike a balance there, but this is just not something I can do by hand at any reasonable level.

But as someone who’s got a pretty decent python background and has watched the ladybug project for a while, I’m thinking about diving in here and familiarizing myself with the python packages. I don’t have Rhino/Grasshopper, but I can verify most things are correct via idf/osm inputs and outputs. Will I be able to do most of this with the dragonfly-energy and honeybee-energy packages, or should I be looking more towards eppy and geomeppy? Any words of wisdom?

Thanks!
Eric

In my opinion (a wee bit of an, okay let’s be honest: a huge obsession with parametric studies and computational optimization):

The LBT ecosystem when matters of building shape are amongst the parameters; way faster and easier setup than studies with eppy/geomeppy.

Side note if your not familiar check out Opyplus python package

One of the fantastic parts of the LBT ecosystem in my opinion is how it lives in the parametric ecosystem of grasshopper and rhino.

The ‘Colibri’ plugin that is apart of the ‘TT toolbox’ is fantastic for brute force iterative studies and was created to work excellently with Design explorer pcp’s with accompanying images for selected objects.

Some additional favorites are:
For MOO:
Wallacei
For all kinds of shenanigans:
Dodo

Likely getting off track… stuff like this gets me excited :sweat_smile:.
But yes: you are in the right place.

Additionally, a favorite part of my workflow for parametric studies is the Pollination cloud makes my life way easier, and studies way faster being able to set up a study: and send the job containing all of the runs to the cloud to be simulated.

While eppy/geomeppy/opyplus are great tools:
the LBT ecosystem is imo way easier, faster and more accessible to do parametric studies and computational optimization.
By the time it would take me to get a parametric study setup in pure python; using LBT ecosystem I’d likely be working on or finishing up the report on the study with all of the simulation results.

Happy to have a chat some time if you’d have any questions or want some lessons learned/personal best practices on all this.

I’m currently finishing up the report on a somewhat similar study that’s informing the committee coming up with some new building code stuff;
And similarly to the study you propose in the aforementioned; is a staple in the early phase workflow I’ve built out for a firm.

1 Like

@TrevorFedyna Thank you! That’s fantastic. Sounds like at some point I need to dive into the Grasshopper/Rhino side of things too! I probably need to dip my toes into the water before I take up any more of your time, but I very much appreciate the feedback - you’ve convinced me to start with this ecosystem and see how things go!

1 Like

Always happy to chat, feel free to reach out