A key for the .rad file innards?

radiance-general
1

Hello,

After researching perforated metal and the use of Radiance, I altered a .rad file to be more like I desired.

I understand the first part of the file contents, but the last 4 lines elude me. I have looked through usman2.pdf and refman.pdf, but I did not find a clear statement as to what is going on with the last 4 lines.

Would someone be kind enough to either send me to a reference or translate what the meaning is of the last 4 lines?

I thank you for any help you can provide.

void metal aluminum
0
0
5 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.95 0.0

void mixfunc y_perforation
6 mesh_material void y_hole perforate.cal -s 0.025
0
1 1.0

y_perforation polygon Face_425a49ee
0
0
12 -0.05 -8.5 1.65 0.05 -8.5 1.65 0.05 -8.5 1.75 -0.05 -8.5 1.75
2

Maybe another question as well. I am using ClimateStudio and it did not like the file above.

Is there a glaring error, or even a slight one?
How would you recommend fixing it?

Again, thank you for any insights you can give.

3

Hi @edsager,

The last four lines describe a polygon that is shaded with the y_perforation material, specifically a square, given the four vertices listed in the last line.

An immediately apparent error is that you have not defined a material called mesh_material.

4

Thank you @Nathaniel_Jones ! What do you think the “Face_425a49ee” means?

Is there a reference manual you know of (book or anything) that might explain what I need to do to get my perforated metal sheets the way I desire them (i.e., hole size, distance between holes, size of sheet, depth of sheet)?

Anything you can recommend would be great, as I have not found much, especially not anything recent.

5

Hi @edsager,

Face_425a49ee is the name of the polygon. It was probably generated at random by the program that wrote the file.

If you want to learn how Radiance works, you can read Rendering with Radiance. Also, refman.pdf is useful for learning the Radiance syntax.

I am not familiar with the perforate.cal file that you are using. It is not one of the files distributed with Radiance. Who gave it to you? Is the author named in the file’s comments? Perhaps you can ask them for an explanation of how to set the hole size and spacing.