Midpane blind in HoneyBee-Grasshopper

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris Mackey on December 10, 2014 at 9:23pm

Abraham and Masoome,

Just to be sure that we are all on the same page, the ZoneShades component that I wrote does allow you to connect a schedule to it and it does write the Shading Control object into the IDF.  However, as we stated previously, this component only does interior and exterior blinds (not mid-plane blinds).  Mid-plane blinds are a whole different animal it seems.

I attached a GH file that shows how to use the ZoneShades component to write a shading control object into the file in case this is helpful.

-Chris

Attachments:

• HB_shoeboxing_CWM.gh, 557 KB

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on December 10, 2014 at 10:40pm

Hi Chris,

My apologies. You are right. I get confused with a previous discussion where importing IDF files don't take the shading control.

Saying that, correct me again if i'm wrong, now that you mention this, i don't think midplane blinds is a different animal (it is an animal but not so different). In the ShadingControl section you can choose the BetweenGlassShade for the blinds. Your ShadeGenerator allows only interior/exterior, but the midpane can be implemented. It is true that if your window construction is not well defined weird things can happen ... but the possibility is there.

BTW, this is how DesignBuilder does it.

Thanks for proving me wrong :-)

-A.

Permalink Reply by Chris Mackey on December 10, 2014 at 11:10pm

Abraham,

I originally tried to respond to this issue by editing my ZoneShades component to accommodate mid-plane blinds but I was not successful.  This is because, when you do just interior or exterior blinds, the glazing construction does not need to include the blind material.  All that I need to write into the IDF is the blind material and the ShadingControl object and I leave the window construction alone.  For the mid-plane blind, I would need to edit the whole window construction inside the component, which is difficult to do.

An idea just popped into my mind, perhaps if the user inputs a full window construction for the blind material, I can have the component recognize it as an mid-plane blind construction and only write the shading control object into the IDF.  Does this sound like a good way to implement it?  Most of the other inputs of the ZoneShades component would have to go blank and the geometry preview of what the shades look like would be blank because the user would  define the angle and width of the shades in the material layer component.  But you would be able to use the component to assign the schedule.

Let me know if this sounds good and, if so, I will try to implement it soon.

-Chris

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on December 13, 2014 at 12:03am

Hi Chris,

That sounds good ... but complicated. I'm not sure if this will be the "final" solution for the shading and shading control. Sounds more like a temporary one. If so, i'm not sure you like/want to do that.

In the meantime, i've just get an answer from the helpdesk regarding the issue qith the equivalent materials. It reads so:

You must use Construction:WindowEquivalentLayer with all *EquivalentLayer materials. The problem with the dropdown lists in IDF Editor has been corrected. For now, you need to paste or type in the material names.

So as we suspected there is a bug, but not a big one on their side. We just need to use the Equivalent definitions all the way and not just with the blinds.

I tried to put this together (see attached, red group with ??? marks), but get an error that says:

1. layer_1 is not a valid material name/definition.
Create the material first and try again.

So, i think it will be easier to implement this new Construction type ... is it?

-A.

Attachments:

• SimpleEnergySimulationBase_Blinds_AY.gh, 516 KB

Permalink Reply by MaHa on December 12, 2014 at 4:02pm

Hi
I asked about the problem of different slat angles and the same result. The problem is that the blind is on the equivalent layer but the glazing material and the gas material aren't. So if the glazing and the gas are defined on equivalent layer, it'll be work. But I don't know how to define them on the equivalent layer.
Best
Masoome

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on December 13, 2014 at 12:05am

Indeed Masoome. See my previous reply. Let's wait for Mostapha/Chris's response on this one.

Somehow i see a coming up solution.

-A.

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on December 15, 2014 at 11:14pm

Abraham and Masoome, I need your help to know what we can do to get this to work. Is it working right now? Do we need to implement something to Honeybee? If it is not so much work then I might be able to do it during the coming Holidays. Can you please summarize where we are with this issue?

-Mostapha

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on December 15, 2014 at 11:43pm

Hi Mostapha,

In my opinion the "easiest" way is to create a new Construction type (Construction:WindowEquivalentLayer) in HB. If you see above the response from the Helpdesk you need this type to use all the "Equivalent" materials. For now, since we can write in a Panel the definitions (as Chris started, and i put together all the definitions in my last attachment) we only need the gate to be able to use them. In this file you can see the definitions, but they are not written in the IDF and/or assigned to the geometry.

Chris's proposal seems to me a bit more difficult to implement ... but maybe i'm wrong. You two know better.

Makes any sense?

-A.

Permalink Reply by MaHa on December 16, 2014 at 12:19pm

Hi Mostapha,
As Abraham says, Since the blind and window should have same kind of construction type, We should define the rest of window materials on "*:EquivalentLayer objects" to have a correct answer.

Thanks
-Masoome

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