Hello Ladybug Community,
I’m very happy to announce the beta release of our new LBT-to-PHPP plugin for Ladybug. This plugin is specifically designed for those of you working on ‘Passive House’ projects and will now allow you to easily push your existing Ladybug models out to a Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) model. This will be most relevant to those of you working on ‘Certified’ Passive House projects, but would also be helpful to anyone who works in the PHPP regularly or is looking to integrate that tool into your workflow.
This plugin allows you to adapt your current Ladybug model and stream that model data in real-time out to the Excel based PHPP. The plugin also includes a host of new tools for both Rhino and Grasshopper to ease parameter assignment and allow for users to encode Passive-House-specific data which can often be quite different than the EnergyPlus inputs and formats (windows, for instance). We have included a set of ‘adapters’ which work to create equivalencies across the two packages in order to speed up and ease the modeling process throughout.
The hope with this tool is that Passive House designers will now be able to more easily tap into the power of the Ladybug Tools, while also streamlining and simplifying the Certification process by using a single Rhino model as the source for all data management during the Certification process.
Some Details About the Plugin:
- You can download the Plugin here. This plugin is free and open-source. It is provided for the community merely in the hopes that some might find it useful.
- This plugin is part of the larger ‘Passive House Tools’ project.
- The current version of this plugin is v0.1, released March 1, 2021
- This is a ‘Beta’ release, meaning: The main features and functions are mostly set, but I’m sure there are plenty of bugs and problems yet to be fixed.
- We’d love to hear about any and all bugs / issues / quirks / etc that you find. Feel free to get in touch with us anytime at PHTools@bldgtyp.com
- This plugin is designed to work with the new LBT v1+ package and makes use of the new LBT SDK(s). A huge thanks to the LBT team for creating such an awesome tool set there. You folks are quite incredible.
- Note: This plugin does not replace the PHPP, it allows you to stream your LBT model data out to the PHPP and control the entire PHPP from within Grasshopper. But you’ll still need to have a copy of the PHPP v9.6-SI or 9.7-IP in order to make this plugin work.
Known Limitations:
- Unfortunately this plugin will not work with the ‘Legacy’ Ladybug tools. Sorry.
- Currently the ‘stream data to excel’ portion only works on the Windows OS.
- Currently this plugin only works with the English language PHPP.
- It does work with either the SI PHPP or the IP PHPP though.
Some Helpful Links:
- The website with lots of additional information
- The github repository
- A YouTube playlist showing how to use the tools
- A YouTube video walking you through the installation
Our Next Steps:
- Multi-language support for our friends working with non-English-language PHPPs
- Easier / more automatic unit-support to ease the IP/SI issues
- Improve Excel write speed, improve stability
- Improve / Streamline the component management/assignment tools on the Rhino side
- Automatic E+ mechanical system conversion
- Testing, validation, verification
- Improve the automatic output to PDF (for compliance tasks / reporting)
- An easier/more automatic installer and updater
- Matching export functionality for WUFI-Passive
So, I hope that some might find this useful. As always - any feedback or thoughts are always appreciated.
all the best,
@edpmay, The Passive House Tools Project
