Hello Ladybug Tools Community!
I have waited so long to write this post but I’m very happy that the day has come! We are so excited to share that Pollination (https://www.pollination.cloud/) is now ready for the larger Ladybug Tools community to use!
We developed Pollination as a commercial product that extends the Ladybug Tools ecosystem, and after a few years of work, it is ready for you to use. Pollination offers the freedom and flexibility of Ladybug Tools while being much easier to use and more accessible to you and your team. Here is a short video of Pollination Apps integration with Revit that we released recently.
Pollination is an ecosystem. It’s a combination of plugins, apps, cloud computing, and package repositories that create a flexible and interconnected ecosystem. We’ve completed almost a year of BETA testing to ensure that our users find the Pollination ecosystem easy to use, intuitive, and valuable!
You can start using Pollination today! In keeping with the mission of Ladybug Tools, Pollination has a free Grasshopper plugin and free Starter cloud computing subscription which resets monthly. You can download the plugins for Grasshopper, Rhino, and Revit from this link. Learn more about pricing on our website.
What can I do in Pollination that I can’t already do with Ladybug Tools in Grasshopper and Rhino?
If you are an experienced Ladybug Tools user you might be thinking why would I need Pollination at all? I have everything that I need! But maybe reading this blog post that @Asisnath is sharing his experience using Pollination with Ladybug Tools can change your mind: Pollination Blog: Pollination User Spotlight: Studio GreenAarch's Energy and Daylighting Journey - In short, Pollination makes the whole process easier and faster while keeping the same level of quality and accuracy.
The Pollination ecosystem excels at solving some of the AEC industry’s most significant pain points. It is developed with an anti-black-box approach which is extremely rare among similar services. For example, you can now generate analytical models in Revit and simulate them directly on the cloud or bring the model to Rhino or Grasshopper and use the respective Pollination plugins to validate the model and conduct simulations. You can also export the model to another 3rd party simulation tool. Even though Pollination and Ladybug Tools can do almost everything you need, you can still export your models to your preferred tools.
Watch this video where I show how to export the same model from Revit to IES-VE, DesignBuilder, OpenStudio, and the Rhino plugin.
Pollination CAD plugins for Rhino (and Revit) bring some of the most loved features of Ladybug Tools to non-Grasshopper users. They make it easy to offload tasks that are tedious or complicated to do with Ladybug Tools Grasshopper plugins. Pollination subscribers can now experience easy-to-navigate panels and dropdown menus for environmental simulation in Rhino (and Revit).
Even better, if you need extended functionality with the CAD plugins, you can use Pollination Apps to customize your experience. You can use Apps developed by the Ladybug Tools team, and the community, or create your own by writing a few lines of Python code! Current subscribers to Pollination have access to a customizable weather report app that allows you to generate climate visualizations, a context generator app that brings GIS massing and data straight to your model with a single click, and many more apps under development. If you can’t find what you need, we are in the process of writing detailed developer docs that you can use to create custom apps. You can check out the live apps here: Pollination Cloud App - If you want to start writing your first app, you should check the documentation for apps and watch our previous user meetup.
Get started today with the Rhino plugin!
We think Ladybug Tools users will find the most value in the Pollination Rhino plugin; it’s a natural extension of our Grasshopper tools with unparalleled user experience. You can download the latest version from this link. Here are the “Top 14 Reasons you should Subscribe to the Pollination Rhino Plugin”!
Setup Geometry
- Effortlessly create complex or large models in Rhino
- Use native Rhino geometry editing capabilities (gumball, shortcuts, and commands) to make modifications with speed and precision.
- Check your model using color by face type or boundary condition commands before you simulate
- Use robust Pollination commands to QA/QC and automatically fix common modeling issues.
Interoperability and Automation
- Work with non-grasshopper users.
- Import and Export models in several file formats, including IDF, OSM, INP, GEM, Rad, gbXML, and HBJSON.
- Automate repetitive tasks using packaged Rhino scripts.
- Leverage parametric capabilities of Honeybee in Grasshopper to add geometry or run simulations.
Run Simulations (Energy / Daylight / and more…)
- Use one-click Pollination recipes or create your own to share publicly or privately.
- Avoid screen lock, run simulations faster, and share models, workflows, or results via Pollination Cloud integration.
Visualization and Collaboration
- Customize results visualization in Rhino,
- Enjoy web-based collaboration and share simulation results.
- Integrate with Pollination apps and generate weather reports, import context models, and more!
- Do all the above without ever leaving the Rhino interface!
Questions and Learn More
If you have any other questions or want to see some of these features, you can always post on Pollination Discourse and someone from our team will get back to you! We also featured Rhino/Ladybug Tools workflows in our User Meetup on May 26, 2022. You can watch the recording here:
Additional Resources
- Check out our User Manual for a Getting Started Guide: User Manual - Pollination User Manual.
- Join Pollination discourse forum: https://discourse.pollination.cloud
- Subscribe to Pollination’s mailing list!
- Learn more about the guiding “Principles of Pollination” on our blog.
We are very excited for this new era where Pollination and Ladybug Tools can grow together to provide a reliable and flexible ecosystem of libraries and tools for environmental building design and simulation! We are well aware that the tools will not be as effective without educated users. Our goal is to provide the freedom and flexibility to support you in building a better and brighter future for the building industry. Thank you for being part of the community, and thank you for making it all possible.
Will see you around!
Mostapha on behalf of the 
team!