Heliotrope Release 1.0

I am excited to announce the release of Heliotrope via Food4Rhino at http://www.food4rhino.com/project/heliotropegh.  Heliotrope provides tools for manipulating solar geometry directly using the parametric controls available in Grasshopper.

Release 1.0 represents a complete rewrite of Heliotrope for consistency and easier use.  It is a major step forward for Heliotrope.  

It now provides a new "JDay" date type, a numerical valued based upon the Julian Day used for astronomical calculations.  JDays are mathematically precise and treat timezone offsets in a consistent fashion.  They convert easily to and from doubles and strings, so they can be sent to text panels or manipulated using the standard math components.  Please see the included User Guide and example programs for more information.  Many of the new components deal with JDays.

A new Cast component which shadow geometry onto any receiving plane allows direct manipulation of shadow geometry using parametric controls.

There are also two new components for interfacing with the Rhino 5.0 sun panel.  Using these your Grasshopper may pick up location and date/time information from the Rhino model or drive parameter settings back to the Rhino sun settings.  Both directions update in real time, so that changing the Rhino sun settings will update the Grasshopper solutions.

The new release is available for trial use, there is a initial trial license file included in the release download for people to check it out.  Free licenses are also available for students and educators.  Commercial licenses are available, please contact me for further information.

Enjoy!  And keep those cards and letters coming!

    - Brian -