Question on Ladybug and Honeybee Updates with THERM & WINDOW

grasshopper honeybee
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Hi everyone, I have a question regarding the latest integration of Honeybee and Ladybug with THERM and WINDOW - from what I can tell, the most recent software integration with Honeybee has been THERM & WINDOW 7.6, updated back in 2018. Has there been an update to pair Honeybee with THERM & WINDOW’s latest updates, 7.7 or 7.8? If not, is this something the Ladybug team is working on?

I’m currently using THERM & WINDOW 7.6 to communicate with Revit and Rhino to run thermal analysis and visualize the data so any advice on circumventing the use of THERM or other tools that can be used to run thermal analysis on a facade system would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

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Hi @jblanchard ,

No, there has not been an update.

Not at the moment. It just hasn’t been a high priority compared to adding better support for the open source, cross-platform simulation engines that we use (Radiance, EnergyPlus, OpenStudio).

If LBNL were to make the THERM engine open source, I think we would place a higher priority on this since we would see that as a step towards making the THERM engine cross-platform and perhaps with future options of using other meshing algorithms, which currently limit the level of detail that THERM can accommodate.

Alternatively, if someone was willing to hire Ladybug Tools LLC to implement an updated connection to THERM, I think we would do it.

But, in the absence of these reasons, it will probably be a while before we consider adding an updated connection to THERM.

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Thank you so much for your reply! I really appreciate the comprehensive answer and reasoning. I’ll keep working with THERM 7.6 for the time being.

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for what it’s worth; that’s explicitly why I still have Rhino 6 installed. I’d 100000% rather use legacy honeybee–>THERM than any other THERM workflow… as native THERM modeling is a recipe for insanity :sweat_smile:

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I just wanted to say that your concerns are noted and, as I said above, I will gladly focus my effort on an updated THERM plugin for LBT if LBNL makes THERM open source.

I know they’ve already open sourced the WINDOW engine and I sense that they have come close to open sourcing THERM at some points in its history. So, if you’re looking for a way to expedite this, bringing up the open source issue to LBNL might be the most effective thing right now.

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