su2rad import numeric results

radiance-general
1

Hi Thomas & All

I'm experimenting with su2rad as a new way of doing our daylight studies (second time actually, hopefully i get a good workflow fully developed this time). I don't have it fully working yet, but I do have useful radiance geometry exports that i can use with our existing radiance (linux) setup. Now I just need to get results back into SketchUp. I see that su2rad can import "numeric results," but what format are these supposed to be? I'm not running radiance from sketchup yet, but I ought to be able to reformat the results I do have to view in SketchUp (if it's plain text). Can anyone out there tell me what file type/format I need to be using, and maybe send a sample file so I can see the contents? Or do I really need to get the windows-based radiance side of things up and running? I may be trying to put a square peg into a round hole...

Thanks,
Cmamer

···

--
*Cramer Silkworth
212 219 2255 | silkworth@transsolar.com <mailto:silkworth@transsolar.com>
Transsolar Inc. | 134 Spring Street Suite 601 | New York, NY 10012

Transsolar Climate Engineering
Technical consulting for energy efficiency and environmental quality in buildings.
New York - Stuttgart - Munich*

2

I asked Thomas the same question last summer and got the response
attached below. It works well.

Rachel Williams, AIA, LEED(r) AP

THE WEIDT GROUP(r)

5800 Baker Road
Minnetonka, MN 55345
T 952.938.1588
F 952.938.1480
twgi.com <http://twgi.com/>

···

----
To create a *.pts file (I'm not sure what the extension is, though) you
have to create
a layer called "numeric". Then create a polygon on this layer that has
the area of the
grid you want to create. The polygon should be in a group with a name
like "room1".
Then it will be exported as "room1.pts". If you have more than one
"numeric" polygon
in one group all will be exported to the same file.

I recomment the following:

1) Create room geometry.
2a) Create duplicate of room floor ("workplane")
2b) Use offset tool to "shrink" workplane by 0.5m.
2c) Move workplane to desired height (0.75m)
2d) Move workplane to layer "numeric"
3a) create group containing room and workplane
3b) name group "room1" or similar

After the export you should get a file "room1.pts".

If there is no such file DO NOT USE THE GEOMETRY FOR RENDERINGS!
Something went wrong and most likely the polygon has been exported
as geometry into the scene and will interfere with the calculations.

Format:

The files containing the rtrace results have to be in the format

"x y z value" or "x y z dx dy dz value"

one entry per line. Lines starting with "#" are treated as comments.
Daysim creates one special comment line that is searched for in a
*.da file. Otherwise comments are ignored.
------

________________________________

From: radiance-general-bounces@radiance-online.org
[mailto:radiance-general-bounces@radiance-online.org] On Behalf Of
Cramer Silkworth
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 4:11 PM
To: radiance-general@radiance-online.org
Subject: [Radiance-general] su2rad import numeric results

Hi Thomas & All

I'm experimenting with su2rad as a new way of doing our daylight studies
(second time actually, hopefully i get a good workflow fully developed
this time). I don't have it fully working yet, but I do have useful
radiance geometry exports that i can use with our existing radiance
(linux) setup. Now I just need to get results back into SketchUp. I see
that su2rad can import "numeric results," but what format are these
supposed to be? I'm not running radiance from sketchup yet, but I ought
to be able to reformat the results I do have to view in SketchUp (if
it's plain text). Can anyone out there tell me what file type/format I
need to be using, and maybe send a sample file so I can see the
contents? Or do I really need to get the windows-based radiance side of
things up and running? I may be trying to put a square peg into a round
hole...

Thanks,
Cmamer

--
Cramer Silkworth
212 219 2255 | silkworth@transsolar.com
Transsolar Inc. | 134 Spring Street Suite 601 | New York, NY 10012

Transsolar Climate Engineering
Technical consulting for energy efficiency and environmental quality in
buildings.
New York - Stuttgart - Munich

3

I'm sure Thomas can aswer better, but from what I've gathered...

It will bring in results from rtrace, such as a grid of illuminance values calculated from
cnt 47 25 | rcalc -e '$1=-1.4+.1*$1;$2=-.25+.1*$2;$3=1;$4=0;$5=0;$6=1'\ | rtrace -I -h -oov -ab 5 octrees/br.oct | rcalc -e '$1=$1;$2=$2;$3=$3;$4=179*(.265*$4+.670*$5+.065*$6)' > b_roomab5.dat

b_roomab5.dat looks like...
-1.4 -0.25 2 1.8598357
-1.4 -0.15 2 2.08278938
-1.4 -0.05 2 2.17479814
-1.4 0.05 2 2.13924843 etc....

See example screenshots from Sketchup.
http://www.rastermon.com/images/LUX.gif
http://www.rastermon.com/images/LUX2.gif

Rob F

···

-----Original Message-----
From: radiance-general-bounces@radiance-online.org on behalf of Cramer Silkworth
Sent: Fri 3/12/2010 2:11 PM
To: radiance-general@radiance-online.org
Subject: [Radiance-general] su2rad import numeric results

Hi Thomas & All

I'm experimenting with su2rad as a new way of doing our daylight studies
(second time actually, hopefully i get a good workflow fully developed
this time). I don't have it fully working yet, but I do have useful
radiance geometry exports that i can use with our existing radiance
(linux) setup. Now I just need to get results back into SketchUp. I see
that su2rad can import "numeric results," but what format are these
supposed to be? I'm not running radiance from sketchup yet, but I ought
to be able to reformat the results I do have to view in SketchUp (if
it's plain text). Can anyone out there tell me what file type/format I
need to be using, and maybe send a sample file so I can see the
contents? Or do I really need to get the windows-based radiance side of
things up and running? I may be trying to put a square peg into a round
hole...

Thanks,
Cmamer
--
*Cramer Silkworth
212 219 2255 | silkworth@transsolar.com <mailto:silkworth@transsolar.com>
Transsolar Inc. | 134 Spring Street Suite 601 | New York, NY 10012

Transsolar Climate Engineering
Technical consulting for energy efficiency and environmental quality in
buildings.
New York - Stuttgart - Munich*

4

Hi Cramer.

Hi Thomas & All

I'm experimenting with su2rad as a new way of doing our daylight studies
(second time actually, hopefully i get a good workflow fully developed this
time). I don't have it fully working yet, but I do have useful radiance
geometry exports that i can use with our existing radiance (linux) setup.

Great. Exporting geometry is more or less what su2rad is all about. If
that works you can use any common way to run the actual calculations.

Now I just need to get results back into SketchUp. I see that su2rad can
import "numeric results," but what format are these supposed to be?

The data files have to be in a plain ascii format that can be produced
by rtrace and rcalc. Records are stored in the file one per line. The
lines can be of the format "x y z value" or "x y z dx dy dz value".
You can produce this output with the "-oodv" option for rtrace and a
bit of rcalc:

cat field.fld | rtrace -ab 4 ... -I -oodv scene.oct | rcalc -e
'$1=$1;$2=$2;$3=$3-1;$4=$4;$5=$5;$6=$6*-1;$7=($7*0.265+$8*0.67+$9*0.065)*179

field.lux

The corrections for $3 and $6 is necessary because rtrace with -I
option reports origin and direction differently.

I'm not running radiance from sketchup yet, but I ought to be able to
reformat the results I do have to view in SketchUp (if it's plain text).

If you prefer a shorter command line you can calculate only lux (or df
or whatever) values in a separate file and then use rlam to combine
them:

rlam field.fld field.lux > field_import.lux

(that last one is untested).

Or do I really need to get the windows-based radiance side of things up
and running? I may be trying to put a square peg into a round hole...

su2rad doesn't offer an option to run Radiance from within SketchUp
(yet). I do my programming on a Mac so things get developed and tested
on a Unix type system first and then I work on making them work on
Windows. su2rad will also always export data in a format that can be
used with the basic Radiance tools.

Cheers,
Thomas

···

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Cramer Silkworth <silkworth@transsolar.com> wrote: