Ironbug Beta Release (outdated)

Hello Ladybug community!

I am excited to write to you the introduction of a new member of Ladybug family: Ironbug. As many of you know that I have worked on a couple of components for Ladybug toolset in the past, and I have been working on bringing OpenStudio’s full HVAC modeling capability to the Grasshopper since the beginning of this year. In the meantime, I am also working on converting Ladybug [+] and Honeybee [+] Python core library to C# API to extend the Ladybug’s development ecosystem, and take advantages of C# language and tooling.

Ironbug is basically a group of tools that are written in C#. This project was called HoneybeeSharp when I first started the ReadAnnualResultsIII for Honeybee, and later changed to Ironbug when the ImageViewer was added. This year, a set of the HVAC components have been added to this group to broaden the current Honeybee energy modeling’s ability.

Ironbug



Here are general overviews of grasshopper components, and the rest of Ironbug:

For Users:

Ladybug


  • Ladybug_Viewer_24 Ladybug.ImageViewer

      Preview images directly in Grasshopper, and supports the HDR image (Radiance image) and other common image formats. The ImageViewer also allows you to generate an animated gif image when there are more than one image connected.

      Demo Video of ImageViewer for Ladybug Tools


  • SortByLayers Ladybug.SortByLayers

      Sort and group the Rhino geometries based on its layer information. It is very useful when modeling a complex simulation scenario with several materials or zone types, etc.

Honeybee


  • ReadAnnualResultsIII Honeybee.ReadAnnualResultsIII

      ReadAnnualResultsIII has the same function as ReadAnnualResultsII, but 20x faster!

      Honeybee | Read Annual Daylight Result III (v2) – 18x faster


      A set of 80 components (by Aug 4, 2018) for creating highly customizable HVAC systems including: Air handling unit, Water loops (hot water, chilled water, condensing water), and VRF.

      Example:

      Build a HVAC system in Grasshopper (2) VRF + DOAS

      A fully customized hvac system (VAV Reheat)



For Developers:

  1. Ironbug.Core (WIP) Github

      The fundamental DotNet library for above plugins. This library includes the Ladybug [+] and Honeybee [+]’s C# API.

  1. Ironbug.PythonConverter (WIP) Github

      It converts Ladybug [+] and Honeybee [+]’s Python Core library to C# API.

  1. Ironbug.HVAC (WIP) Github

      A standalone core HVAC library that can be shared between different platforms (Grasshopper, Dynamo)



Installation Instructions:

  1. Download the Ironbug.zip (1.4 MB) and unblock the file.

unblock



2. Unzip to C:\Ironbug, and open 00_installer.gh in Grasshopper.





3. Find the OpenStudio folder path on your computer, and set toggle to true to install.

installer



4. Restart the Grasshopper, and enjoy!

-Mingbo Peng

21 Likes

Great job! Mingbo Peng, Thanks.

1 Like

Hey great work @MingboPeng, glad to finally see this being officially released!

1 Like

Nicely done @MingboPeng! Thank you for sharing all your work.

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@MingboPeng sharper than ever!

2 Likes

@ Hi Mingbo Peng. You are doing a great work for all the Ladybug Tools users. Thanks for your Ironbug. I believe it will be a best plugin.

1 Like

@MingboPeng Thank you. Great project

1 Like

@MingboPeng Thank you for this great work!!!

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great work @MingboPeng. would be good to see samples of how the dynamo side of Ironbug.HVAC could/would work.

@MingboPeng Thanks for all your hard work, and most importantly sharing it with the community!

2 Likes

真棒~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!

1 Like

Great job Mingbo! Well done and thank you.

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Hi @schaggar92 , I don’t have any dynamo notes build yet. But it should be fairly easy to added them to dynamo as I have separated this standalone library. I don’t have any schedule to add Ironbug to dynamo yet, as Honeybee[+]'s energy portion is not available in dynamo.

Hi @MingboPeng,

Thanks a for all the amazing work!

Regarding the Image Viewer I’ve been remapping the RGB values to the legend to obtain the corresponding lux levels. any chance the component could issue the values directly?

Kind regards,
Olivier

Hi @OlivierDambron

How do you remap the RGB value to luminance value? did you do manually?

Thanks,
Mingbo

hi @MingboPeng
sorry for the late reply. indeed either I find the same color scale or I screenshot the one falsecolor uses and use imagemapper and input the bounds+remap values by depicting the values on the image, nothing precise here. When I get some time I’ll try to look inside falsecolor or DIva, I think they had a component for that.

best
Olivier

Hi @OlivierDambron

Here is a quick hack to get luminance values (tested in Rhino 6):
GetLuminanceValues.gh (23.5 KB)

Here is the tested HDR:
Room.HDR (141.9 KB)

Note: this won’t work for falsecolor image, please use original HDR image.


Let me know you have any questions.

-Mingbo

4 Likes

Thanks so much @MingboPeng !

Wonderful!

Looks really impressing.
How can I import all the HVAC components.
Where do i have to put all the C# files in order to get it working.
Till now only a few components show up when i follow the installation instructions.