How best to handle furniture and facades with Honeybee?

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 3:49pm

Sorry if this is obvious. I’m new to Honeybee and just want to make sure I’m handling my geometry correctly when passing it off to Honeybee so it can package it properly for the other engines.

I’ve been learning to use Honeybee for daylighting analysis and image based renders for a month or so and it’s been working great! I really like the tool chain, and I’ve never experienced a single crash or slowdown. Now I’m starting to put more complicated geometry in the scene, including furniture and non-trivial facades and I just want to make sure I’m doing it correctly.

Ignoring RAD materials for a second, my process has been using:
Mass2Zones - for building/room shells
addHBGlz - for glazing surfaces
createHBSrfs - for anything else inside the building/room and facade geometry

Is this correct? Can/should createHBSrfs be used for any additional geometry in the scene? Even if this geometry is complicated (e.g. a detailed Herman Miller chair)? Is it appropriate to pass through Honeybee as surfaces?

What about facades that cannot be joined and are thousands of b-reps? Should they be converted to a single mesh first?

Some screenshots:
facade
furniture

Thanks in advance for any advice!

sarith · June 4, 2018, 3:54pm

Hi @delrocco, try the MSH2RAD component. Here is an example using that component. … http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=sariths&fork=hydra&id=IES_ElectricLighting_WithNewComponent&slide=0&scale=1&offset=0,0
(Ignore the electric lighting part)

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 6:16pm

Thank you! Definitely seems like a better way to go.

However, I am now getting this error from ‘out’ of runDaylightAnalysis:
#----------------------------------------------------------
Image-based simulation
Current working directory is set to: c:\ladybug\office\imageBasedSimulation
Failed to read the results!
rpict: fatal - (office_IMG.oct): truncated octree

rpict: fatal - (office_IMG.oct): truncated octree

Runtime error (PythonException): Failed to read the results!
rpict: fatal - (office_IMG.oct): truncated octree

rpict: fatal - (office_IMG.oct): truncated octree

Traceback:
line 357, in script
#----------------------------------------------------------

Is there something I need to do to my mesh?

Here is how I have the project configured now:

sarith · June 4, 2018, 6:34pm

That’s a Radiance error, perhaps due to a modifier mismatch. Can you share your radiance folders here or through inbox? Before doing that, I would suggest running the simulation sans the _additionalRadFiles input just as a check to see if the error can be isolated to the outputs from MSH2RAD.

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 7:08pm

The simulation runs with that facade geometry above left out completely.
The simulation runs with that facade geometry as Breps through createHBSrfs.

Without that facade geometry above, the geometry left in the scene is the building/room shell (which was imported from a model), some basic not-super-highrez office furniture (perhaps this bit has some errors), 12 glazing surfaces, and a ground surface in front of window.

However, it does have the following warnings, even with just that geometry:
#-----------------------------
Image-based simulation
Current working directory is set to: c:\ladybug\office\imageBasedSimulation
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_23_Srf_1_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_24_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_22_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_25_Srf_1_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_22_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_24_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_25_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_21_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_21_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_36_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_24_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_20_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_21_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_25_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_24_Srf_2_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_48_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_16_Srf_37_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_1_Srf_3_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_25_Srf_1_0”
rpict: warning - non-planar vertex for polygon “zone_22_Srf_2_0”
#-----------------------------

Here is the generated imageBasedSimulation folder when the facade geometry is added:
imageBasedSimulation.zip (33.5 KB)

sarith · June 4, 2018, 7:56pm

These files are missing from your archive:
c:/ladybug/facade/MSH2RADFiles/material_facade.rad
c:/ladybug/facade/MSH2RADFiles/facade.rad
I will need those as well. Rest of your files are fine.

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 8:17pm

Whoops, sorry!

facade.zip (53.7 KB)

Edited my reply above to note that the non-facade geometry also includes some basic office furniture. I believe that is where the warnings are coming from.

sarith · June 4, 2018, 8:45pm

I am not quite sure how this happened, but for some reason your material file for the meshed elements is missing a few values and the corresponding geometry is incorrectly named… Otherwise your files appear to be fine:

Here are the changed files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q911is2bagevxyf/AAC7mtJ7IGda66BK9TDDjQSpa?dl=0

(PS: You might have to tweak the -lr, -ar and -aa value to get a high quality render. My images are from a preview script and therefore of low quality)

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 8:50pm

Thank you very much for your help!

Yea, no worries on render. I’m just using low quality testing too right now.

I removed the basic furniture inside, but still got the same errors (as you probably know now). I also still get 8 of those rpict warnings even with just office shell and door, so perhaps there’s some pesky geometry around.

As for the material, I am using the Honeybee Radiance Metal Material script/component:

Do you think I should not use that? And specify it differently?

sarith · June 4, 2018, 8:56pm

You need not worry about warnings. They will mostly be an issue in case you have coplanar surfaces of different types. http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/oconv.1.html
Regarding the corrupt material file, @mostapha would be the best person to answer that. If the issue persists, you can always hack your way around it. The inputs for the _addititonalRadFiles are meant to be file paths. So, you can manually edit the file and add them in.

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 8:57pm

Thanks very much for your help!

delrocco · June 4, 2018, 9:19pm

Yea, looks like MSH2RAD messes that up even if specifying the material manually.

facade.zip (53.7 KB)

I guess a post process to file is required for now.

mostapha · June 30, 2018, 3:12am

It seems I have been away for a long time! Here is the fix:

The bug was introduced because of a recent improvement in Radiance material parser.

minggangyin · August 1, 2018, 5:28am

@mostapha Thank you for your fix. I am issued with the same question. After I updated Honeybee to the latest version, the question was solved quite nice.

vhoang · September 25, 2018, 9:26am

Hi @mostapha, I ran into the problem of material name is not written properly while using msh2rad component. Somehow the _RADMaterial string was not split with the “\n” …
20180926_rad_vh.gh (101.0 KB)

mostapha · September 27, 2018, 2:36am

Hi @vhoang, Thank you for reporting this issue. This improvement should fix the issue: