post your geco requests here !!!

if you have any ideas/problems or questions just let us know ;)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by to] on December 10, 2010 at 6:25am

it is not possible to extract the result,... we can extract specific values for day and time. Another way which would include some manual work is to use the *.stat files from energy plus .

best

[uto]

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on December 10, 2010 at 3:22pm

Thanks to],

What is energy plus? Is it part of Weather tool?

Is weather tool not linkable with GH?

Cheers,

Arthur

Permalink Reply by Michela Turrin on December 31, 2010 at 7:53am

Hi both,

a question from a few of us. Is there a way we can customize the material library of the EcoSetMaterial component? (like connecting it to a customized library and/or customazing the properties of the default material data it uses).

Thanks again and have a nice 2011!!!

Michela

Permalink Reply by Florian Heinzelmann on January 1, 2011 at 1:59pm

Hi U & to.

Servus and a happy new year.

I'm working together with Michela on that topic. It seems to us that all material properties are defined within Geko, meaning even if we change a mat property within Ecotect it gets overwriten by the Geko settings every time. Is there a way for us to define the materials which get exportet to Ecotect? We are trying to do an material-geometry optimization process for minimizing solar incident radiation while maximizing the daylight factor. It would be great to hear your thoughts about that.

Many thanks,

Florian

Permalink Reply by to] on January 3, 2011 at 10:57am

Hi Florian and Michela

happy new year to you both too!

Geco is calling the default Ecotect library so if you change something there the changed value should be assigned.

But it is also possible to create custom materials with the help of scripting an let e.g galapagos change the values

In fact for lighting simulation purposes, there are four key properties of a material that need to be defined. These are Solar Absorption, Transparency, internal and external Reflectance colour, and Specularity.

So I can assist you with help just send me an email which additional values you want to change and we will see what we can do ;).

Also, do you want to create new materials or change existing ones (both is possible)

hear you soon

[u & to]

Permalink Reply by Florian Heinzelmann on January 4, 2011 at 3:57pm

Hi U & To

Thanks for your swift reply. Just for me to understand:

My material list in Ecotect is different from yours in the Geko pdf and Geko mat component. For example I have in the windows section only generic double glazing 72 (first in my list) and two others in opposition to the 8 different which are in the Geko mat component. If i select in Geko lets say type of object 6 (window) and no matter which material of object I choose it always selects the generic double glazing 72. I guess that makes sense that Ecotect switches its material object to 0 in the list because the lists are not corresponding and the material Geko calls does not exist in Ecotect? What puzzles me more is the fact if I change a given material property within Ecotect in a list where both mat lists (Ecotect & Geko) are corresponding after switching on Geko my changes of the material properties within Ecotect are gone and set back to its original values. Any idea?

For the other issue:

We would like to create new materials. Here we would like to experiment with fabric materials. I'm currently trying to figure out how the given material values of the fabric manufacturer (Ts, Rs, As, Tv, SHGC, Colour) to be translated into Ecotect material properties.

But anyway, what would be better? Defining a set of new materials within Ecotect and being able to assign them from Geko or being able to change material properties within Geko and transfer them to Ecotect for incident solar radiation and DF tests?

The first option if possible could give users the freedom to have a different material library then that one in Geko. Then the user only has to know how to asign which object type number and material number to get the right ecotect material. It would be also more easy to connect one slider to galapagos, meaning object type could stay constant but only switching through different materials which could be easily be found back since those correspond with the manufactures data (if properly done).

The second option would create more freedom I guess but one would have to connect several sliders to galapagos switching the material properties themselves which means one would end up with new (utopian) materials rather than existing materials which are on the market.

If you have any suggestions we would be happy to hear them. Thanks a lot.

best,

Florian

Permalink Reply by Florian Heinzelmann on January 4, 2011 at 4:06pm

Hi again.

Some second thought:

May be it could be possible to have an own customized material library within Ecotect where one would be able to import that into Geko and update the existing Geko list once in a while in case the Ecotect library gets changed by the user. A sort of sync function. May be one way or even both ways.

best,

Florian

Permalink Reply by to] on January 5, 2011 at 12:01pm

Hi Florian

So i dug a bit deeper in your problem that geco has always overwritten your new material settings and finally it was not geco :)

The solution is that you have to change the material in the library and not in the model table. After that you have to save the lib with a new filename otherwise Ecotect reads still the old settings from the file and not from the window-form

sorry for the trouble, but after i found the trick it was quite clear why it acts in that way

best

to]

Permalink Reply by Michela Turrin on January 5, 2011 at 2:55pm

Hi, So first changing the library, saving it (also for following changes), loading the library into the model (once), and running Geco. Thanks a lot! It seems it works perfectly both for updating the model with changed materials and for properly running the calculations with the updated materials. Great, thanks again! Michela

Permalink Reply by to] on January 5, 2011 at 9:06am

Hi Florian

Strange that your material library is different to ours because this is the default library from Ecotect (i upload the lib to the google site group)

What we have done in the MaterialComponent was to implement this default library

so that we can call it, so it will not recognize custom materials because we are not calling them. So thats why you can only access the one you really have so as you say it really make sense that Ecotect is only feed back the glazing 72.

For this behavior of changing back the material to default i really have no idea because i just tested it at my system again and it worked fine (just to ask,sorry for that, did you hit the apply changes button?)

So but back to the material problem:

Both are possible with just one slider

for case one:(which can support multilayer materials)

we can write a component which is searching the mat table for the supported material name and is applying that after success to the object as you know it from the current material component

for case two:(only single layer)

we can write a component with the needed inputs for setting up a new material

and it also apply this material to the object

what you have to support are panels with the correct values so that you can select the entries with the list item component and one single slider

so you can choose what you prefer both are possible the positive part of variant one is that it is really flexible but you have to support the lib for other users , for variant two is that you do not have to send the lib to other users that they can run it but you can only create single layer materials

so i would prefer variant 01 but we can discuss it further on

for the second thought:

it is nearly variant 01 but you also have to support the MaterialNames inside GH

sync is not possible

best,

Tom

Permalink Reply by Michela Turrin on January 5, 2011 at 12:49pm

Hi all,

Thomas, thanks a lot for the availability and help!

We will prepare a description of material properties and see with you what the best to do - perfect. (In principle, it looks to me that solution one can fully do this specific job now and offers higher flexibility for further applications - so it should be fully fine).

As for the discrepancy between the Ecotect material library and the materials listed in the Geco component, we will check the library uploaded on Florian's Ecotect, thanks. (Florian, from your previous communications your Ecotect library looks different than mine as well. Might maybe be due to Radiance's connection since I think Radiance used to have a different windows' library?).

Gr and thanks, Michela

Permalink Reply by to] on January 5, 2011 at 1:47pm

I Michela

thanks for your reply.

i have sent you an email with an updated version which includes the custom-material component with an example file.

Please inform me if this suites your workflow so that we can include this component in the next release.

take care,

to]