Chien,
IES's Virtual Environment is a software suite for MEP / Building Services
engineers. It offers things like energy modeling, thermal load analysis,
CFD, and analysis tools of that sort. One of the modules is called
RadianceIES, which translates the model in VE to Radiance geometry and calls
Desktop Radiance.
You can set most of the switches, pick sky types, apply materials, set
patterns on the materials, set camera views, and add luminaires.
More information is here:
http://www.radiance-online.org/radiance-workshop5/2006_Radiance_Workshop/Presentations/DonStearn.pdf
Honestly, if you know what you're doing, there aren't many things you can't
do with it that you would be able to do interfacing with Radiance directly,
but I'll try to hit a few:
VE is set up as a walled garden, performing the tasks for you in the
background. This can be troublesome if something goes wrong, and you're
trying to retrace where the problem is. Also along these lines, they don't
allow for scripting within VE, nor an API to script from the outside, so you
can't do fancier things like multiple iterations of geometry, data
manipulation, or things of that nature. Another thing is that the models are
catered toward the thermal modeling, so they are mostly massing geometry.
For more complex geometry, you either have to have generated it separately
(an external RAD file) or brought the model through something like Sketchup,
in which case I'd recommend su2rad instead. As I recall, sensor points are
limited to one per room, so you cannot generate a grid of values.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the intensely hierarchical nature of VE, there
are some settings which are 5, 6, 7 windows deep, but I gather you're used
to this through the thermal/energy modeling bits of the software. All that
said, version 6 is being released in a month or so, maybe there will be a
different song to be sung then.
--Dave
···
------------------------------
*From:* [email protected] [mailto:
[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Chien Si
Harriman
*Sent:* Monday, May 18, 2009 6:02 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* [Radiance-general] questions from newbie
Hi all-
I’m being asked increasingly to perform more daylighting and artificial
daylight studies. I typically use IES Virtual Environment as the interface
for Radiance, and I find I like it a fair amount, in terms of ease-of-use.
Since this is where I started using Radiance, I’m wondering if anyone has
any insights into what IES Virtual Environment can/cannot do when compared
to scripting from scratch. Anyone offering insight here would be greatly
appreciated.
*Chien Si Harriman, LEED AP*
*Senior Building Performance Engineer*
* *
*G U T T M A N N *&* B L A E V O E T *|* * *C o n s u l t i n g E n g i n e
e r s*
2351 Powell Street | San Francisco, CA 94133
Committed to the 2030 Challenge <http://architecture2030.org/>
Direct 415.655.4005 | Main 415.655.4000 | Fax 415.655.4001
Email [email protected] | www.gb-eng.com
San Francisco* *| Sacramento* *| Santa Rosa
Certified Green Business, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Santa Rosa | 2007
Sacramento Sustainable Business of the Year Award Recipient