Groundhog project: OpenSource SketchUp 2 Radiance exporing, focused on annual daylight simulations

Hello List,

As some of you might remember, some (a long) time ago, I uploeaded a Video
of an extention that I was developing for exporting SketchUp models to
Radiance.... I know there is another (very respected) one, but I did not
really like it. I felt it was not really prepared for working with
thickness, illums, and some other stuff... at least it did not work for me.

Now, we (Germán Molina, Sergio Vera and Waldo Bustamante, from Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile) are proud to anounce that we have finally
finished registering our extension: *Groundhog*. The name comes from the
Groundhog day tradition (not my tradition, but I found it interesting).

What does it do, for now?

Allows Working with thick walls (easy window creation).
Exporting complex polygons as one polygon (window openings are not a
problem)... there are still issues with the "non plane polygon")
Assigning materials from a library of auto-contained Radiance Material
files.
Materials not existing in the library will be "guessed" by defining a
plastic material with no specularity or roughness, with the same color. If
the material is semi-transparent, a colored glass material will be assigned.
Adding workplanes, which will be exported as a set of sensors that can be
used by rcontrib and rtrace programs.
Adding Illums.
Grouping windows in order to make more efficient lighting simulations.
Exporting by layers, separating (or not) the windows from the rest of the
geometry, allowing 3 and 5 phase simulations.
Export multiple views, corresponding to the Scenes (pages) saved within the
SketchUp model.
Every exported scene file comes with a CIE clear sky with the sun located
according to the sun direction in the model. We are using Geolocation.

I have been using this for about two years now... and now, I think, is a
useful tool, and I see a lot of potential in it.

We would really like to count with your feedback, ideas, and hopefully with
some contributions to the code.

We have worked on the documentation, although we know there are some things
we need to do.

Web page: http://groundhoglabs.github.io/Groundhog/
Source Code: https://github.com/GroundhogLabs/Groundhog
Documentation: http://groundhoglabs.github.io/Groundhog/doc/doc_index.html

BYE

Germán Molina

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