Sunday, August 28, 2011

Energy Modeling with Grasshopper (Proof-of-Concept)

Grasshopper users have all kinds of simulation tools at their disposal... however, I have yet to see an attempt at integrating energy simulation tools with Grasshopper... so here is a 'weekend warrior' study which links Grasshopper to EnergyPlus.

I wrote a few custom components which automate the formatting of Grasshopper geometry into a simulation-ready model that can be read directly by EnergyPlus. The colorful visualizations show a simple box structure going through an hourly analysis on a specified design day. The analysis results are streamed back into Grasshopper after the energy analysis is run

There is much potential here (and work to be done before I can put this into a full release!)... I would also like to consult with the experts first before I release this as a plug-in. I am not an MEP expert, after all...

We have just about everything else: solar (DIVA, Geco), structures (Karamba, StructDraw), physics (Kangaroo).... What other simulation tools will we see in Grasshopper's future?