I am posting an issue that I have faced today with Honeybee and I am hoping that someone will be able to help me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to resolve this problem on my own.
What happened: Everything was working fine in a project in an Energy simulation, until one time when opening the same grasshopper file, there was an error (the one you see in the screenshot). I have tried other files with the same components, same issue. Tried searching for the error but haven’t gotten anywhere with it either. When the file is being opened on other devices, everything works without issues, so something is definitely wrong on my end.
What I have tried: Un-installing and re-installing pollination tools, un-installing and re-installing Rhino, checking Rhino setting and version. Every time with restarting Rhino and my laptop. Don’t know what else I can try.
If someone has faced a similar issue or knows what else I can try, I would really appreciate the help!
After looking further into the full script, I have found the issue. Perhaps this will be of use to somebody else in the future. The problem was in the idf file for the window construction that I got from the third party. In their window frame the edge to center ratio was indeed 4.7…, however HB only allows for the value to be below 4.
After manually removing the frame from the window construction, everything worked fine. I am not sure what the workaround would be to load correct frame values otherwise though.
… we usually try to catch it and make sure that it does not create a blocking error. But, because we have checks in place to prevent you from making these invalid materials with the Grasshopper components, they can sometimes find their way into being blocking bugs like this.
Can you share the IDF that created the problem for you so that I can catch errors like this and make sure that they don’t block anyone in future versions of the software?
FYI, the maximum limit of 4 comes from the EnergyPlus IDD:
So you would never be able to simulate a frame with a value of 4.7 in EnergyPlus. Still, the right way for us to handle this is to just not import the invalid frame material from your library instead of making the whole software grind to a halt.
Actually, from the error message, I was able to make an IDF with an invalid frame that recreated the issue. Window_Picture_Avg.idf (5.7 KB)
This allowed me to find the bug and I just pushed a fix for it here:
Now, when this type of invalid frame is encountered in an IDF file in user standards, there will be no blocking bug and the window construction will still get imported. Just without the invalid frame:
