Hi guys,
It’s been a very long time since I have used this plug-in/tools and I get redirected to pollination page from the ladybug page.
Has the plug-in been incorporated into pollination or are there still different things?
In what cases should I use one or the other?
Thanks for the insight guys
Edit: Additional question, do I still need to install radiance separately?
Hi @ShynnSup,
I would say that Pollination is more like an extension to Ladybug Tools, providing three main additional features; cloud computing, geometry interoperability (Revit plugin), and model management (Rhino plugin).
The Pollination Grasshopper plugin is free and includes all of Ladybug tools, including its dependencies (Radiance and OpenStudio/EnergyPlus). It also gives you access to the free level of cloud computing if you want to try it out.
Revit plugin offers additional functionality for exporting simplified models out of Revit. Rhino plug in adds a new tab in Rhino to manage your model (room, construction, sensor grids assigment, etc).
I would recommend the Pollination Grasshopper installer to anyone wanting to use Ladybug Tools, it’s an improved installation experience compared to what’s available on Food for Rhino.
Thank you Charlie, will do!
I also remember there was a page with Ladybug example definitions? I don’t know if that is still relevant or if there is a new place to have a look at them 
Are you thinking of Hydrashare? Hydra - Sharing made easy!
Unfortunately I don’t think many (if any) of the scripts there have been updated to the new version of LBT (v 1.0 onwards) so I generally wouldn’t recommend using them beyond inspiration for creating new scripts using the new components.
However, the LBT team have put together a great set of tutorials based on the v1 onward components here: Introduction - Ladybug Tools Academy
Yess, that was it! Thank you!
I also found some example definitions in the food4rhino ladybug zip, if anyone is interested. Although I did install directly through Pollination like you suggested, much easier!
Great shout - I forgot about the example files
Thanks for answering the question , @charlie.brooker , and that was a great response. I just wanted to add in case it wasn’t clear from the initial description - “Ladybug Tools” refers to the open source project that has been going on for a decade now, which includes the core Python libraries as well as the LBT Grasshopper plugin. “Pollination” refers to the set of products and services that we sell, all of which leverage Ladybug Tools under the hood but help streamline typical workflows that people might have in practice.
Generally speaking, any capability that is related to making simulations more accurate or customizing the simulation to answer specific research or design questions is going to be implemented as part of the Ladybug Tools open source project and the Grasshopper components. Any capability that is related to convivence, saving time, automating model cleanup, auto-generating BEM models from BIM, running simulations at scale with cloud computing, or sharing models/results/tools with team members who don’t know visual (or Python) scripting is going to be implemented under Pollination.
So we made the distinction between Ladybug Tools and Pollination to make it clear when you’re working with the open source project and you’re acting as a member of our lovely community here vs. when you’re a customer.
The Pollination Grasshopper Plugin is somewhat in between these two worlds since it’s free and most of what you’re getting there is just the open source Ladybug Tools libraries and Grasshopper plugin. But it gives you a taste for how much time can be saved in the Pollination world since running the single-click installer is a lot easier than the traditional Food4Rhino workflow that you’d have to go through to install Ladybug Tools and all of the simulation engines.