Hi all!
I’m currently trying to conduct a UTCI analysis and have a load of tree’s in my model which are needed for thermal comfort.
I’ve found the HB vegetation material tool, but not sure how to set it up how I need, or if its even useful for this purpose.
If anyone has any experience of using this tool for tree materials, or any wisdom on how best to assign a construction that acts similar to how a tree would, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Alex.
Hi @alexsdiamond, welcome to the forum!
The primary impact trees have on thermal comfort will be from the shade they provide, both directly to people, and to surrounding surfaces. From my work, it’s generally considered a reasonable assumption to model the tree as a shade surface, giving it the same surface temperature as the surrounding air.
Have you looked at the sample here? Also in the samples folder (something I never seem to be able to find)
I’ve just had a look and yes I think assigning them as shading objects will probably do just fine for what I need. Thank you for that.
I’m having a seperate problem now, in that when I assign my tree geometries to the UTCI analysis, it takes a very long time to run compared to when they were not added. I understood an increase in time would occur, but not to the extent it has.
One thought that I had was changing the setting for polygon clipping to pixel counting, as I have a number of surfaces that might benefit from this, however I’m not sure how to apply that to my script.
If you, @mostapha or @chris on how to apply this, or to generally speed up the simulation, that would be greatly appreciated.
Hi @alexsdiamond, you’ll likely want to simplify tree geometry appropriately - the default settings for the UTCI comfort map should be pretty robust, so I’d recommend looking at your geometry first before looking at other options. Lower numbers of surfaces / mesh faces will significantly speed up analysis. The simplified tree in the example file is a good example.
Thanks Charlie,
I’ll have another look and make a few changes. I’m sure it can be streamlined a bit more than it currently is.