Custom Materials problem

old forum
1

Hi everyone,

I want to create a custom insulated concrete wall and be able to change insulation thickness in order to adjust the wall’s U-value. Initially I tried to do it using existing materials but I noticed that, for example, insulation had a thickness of 20mm (while in my case I need to have from 100 to 200mm of insulation). So, I created an EP Construction using

a.an EP opaque material to create the insulation,

b.a number slider to adjust the insulation thickness and

c. a concrete wall from the EP library (I selected M15 200MM Heavyweight concrete).

But:

  1. When I changed the insulation thickness, the final wall U-value did not update. I had to recompute everything in order to get the correct number.

  2. After having this issue, I created different insulation materials with different thicknesses (one 150mm and one 200mm) and two different wall types (respectively) but I got a lower U-value for less insulation which did not make sense (see Picture 1), so I assumed that this was happening because I had used by mistake the same material name. Therefore, I changed the names (let’s say insulation1 and insulation2) and now… I get another error (see Picture 2) and I don’t know what to do next.

Therefore my questions are:

  1. What am I doing wrong?

  2. Is there a way to parametrically change material thickness, so as to use it as a gene for optimization? I also attach the definition

Thank you for all the help!



honeybee_custommaterials.gh (484 KB)

2

Amalia,

I tried to build a process of defining materials/constructions so you can get the picture.

See attached. Is not as complicated as you described, but you need to be “focused”.

See above the red line. Comments are there at different stages.

Let me know if you have further questions.

-A.

honeybee_custommaterials_AY.gh (532 KB)

1 Like
3

Great! I would have never done that. Thank you so much!