I grew tired of opening finder to open my trans material excel spreadsheet, wait for excel to open every time I needed a trans material definition (really I know who has that kind of time?). To save myself the hassle I spent a the better part of a saturday creating a dashboard widget for generating trans material descriptions on mac osx! now I just hit F4 slide the sliders and hit the copy button and I've got it.
Testimonial:
It was early, I had a ton of email to get through, the coffee hadn't kicked
in; on top of all that, my trans material generating workflow really had me
down! I tried Gen_Trans_Widget from Mcneilorama, and it was just the thing
for my early morning blues! Thank you, Gen_Trans_Widget! (Not available in
stores.)
I grew tired of opening finder to open my trans material excel spreadsheet,
wait for excel to open every time I needed a trans material definition (really
I know who has that kind of time?). To save myself the hassle I spent a the
better part of a saturday creating a dashboard widget for generating trans
material descriptions on mac osx! now I just hit F4 slide the sliders and hit
the copy button and I've got it.
Very cool, Andy! Only took me a minute to install, and the stops on the sliders corresponding to legal values are a particularly nice touch.
One item for the wish list would be the ability to specify color somehow, so one doesn't have to do the luminance conversion thing. Something like a hue-saturation wheel would work. Shall I send you an image for that?
Best,
-Greg
···
From: Andy McNeil <[email protected]>
Date: April 29, 2010 10:27:56 PM PDT
Hi,
I grew tired of opening finder to open my trans material excel spreadsheet, wait for excel to open every time I needed a trans material definition (really I know who has that kind of time?). To save myself the hassle I spent a the better part of a saturday creating a dashboard widget for generating trans material descriptions on mac osx! now I just hit F4 slide the sliders and hit the copy button and I've got it.
You're right, the ability to specify color would be nice. Yes, please send your image.
Did you notice what happens when Td & Ts are set to zero?
Thanks,
Andy
···
On Apr 30, 2010, at 8:46 AM, Greg Ward wrote:
Very cool, Andy! Only took me a minute to install, and the stops on the sliders corresponding to legal values are a particularly nice touch.
One item for the wish list would be the ability to specify color somehow, so one doesn't have to do the luminance conversion thing. Something like a hue-saturation wheel would work. Shall I send you an image for that?
Best,
-Greg
From: Andy McNeil <[email protected]>
Date: April 29, 2010 10:27:56 PM PDT
Hi,
I grew tired of opening finder to open my trans material excel spreadsheet, wait for excel to open every time I needed a trans material definition (really I know who has that kind of time?). To save myself the hassle I spent a the better part of a saturday creating a dashboard widget for generating trans material descriptions on mac osx! now I just hit F4 slide the sliders and hit the copy button and I've got it.
This was more of a struggle than I expected. I don't know what I did with my old color wheel, so I tried to come up with an expression to generate a new one based on the Wikipedia page on HSV conversions. It's not quite what I was going for, but it's OK:
OK, the inevitable... the question that you know had to come.... ;->
Is there any way to port this to Linux (and I suppose Windows)? Or perhaps port to something web based?
Best,
-Jack
···
--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction
Gregory J. Ward wrote:
Hi Andy,
This was more of a struggle than I expected. I don't know what I did with my old color wheel, so I tried to come up with an expression to generate a new one based on the Wikipedia page on HSV conversions. It's not quite what I was going for, but it's OK:
Yes the inevitable question. I actually thought about mentioning portability in my original email, but thought that it was presumptuous to think that anyone other than me might actually want it. It is a silly tool after all, though not as silly as my original iphone app idea.
Mac widgets are html and javascript, so putting it on the web is easy in theory. I'll see if I can get it to work on the web, and then try to find a suitable home for it.
I think windows 7 has equivalent sidebar gadgets that are also html with javascript. Some Linux variants have a similar widget/gadget scheme. I'd be happy to share what I have with anyone who wants to create the same for another operating system, but I don't have easy access to windows 7 or a linux box, so I can't do that myself.
Best,
Andy
···
On Apr 30, 2010, at 12:01 PM, Jack de Valpine wrote:
Hi Andy,
OK, the inevitable... the question that you know had to come.... ;->
Is there any way to port this to Linux (and I suppose Windows)? Or perhaps port to something web based?
Best,
-Jack
--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction
Gregory J. Ward wrote:
Hi Andy,
This was more of a struggle than I expected. I don't know what I did with my old color wheel, so I tried to come up with an expression to generate a new one based on the Wikipedia page on HSV conversions. It's not quite what I was going for, but it's OK:
Hi Greg,
Thanks, that's quite the pcomb function. I'll see what I can do to get a color picker in the widget. Thanks!
Andy
···
On Apr 30, 2010, at 11:55 AM, Gregory J. Ward wrote:
Hi Andy,
This was more of a struggle than I expected. I don't know what I did with my old color wheel, so I tried to come up with an expression to generate a new one based on the Wikipedia page on HSV conversions. It's not quite what I was going for, but it's OK:
It is very easy to throw Linux on a Mac if you have vmfusion (www.vmware.com) or parallels (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/). From my own usage of vmfusion, all you need to do is download the latest Ubuntu or Kubuntu livecd (www.ubuntu.net - gnome desktop version or www.kubuntu.net for the kde desktop version). Create a new virtual appliance, and set the cd to point to the iso download. No need to allocate any virtual disks - set memory to 1024 or better and go. (Best to have 2GB of memory or better in the host computer or it will be very slow.)
Once running, go to the software download area and download/install radiance from the repository or from the terminal use 'sudo apt-get install radiance radiance-doc radiance-materials' to download and install radiance.
Alternative images with radiance pre-installed can be found at http://luminance.londonmet.ac.uk/ Learnix for Axel Jacob's version or my own under the Curtin link - many thanks to Axel for hosting this for me.
By the way vmplayer - a free download for Linux and Windows, allows Linux and Windows to run/create virtual appliances. This is how we teach Radiance at Curtin on PC's running Windows XP/Pro.
*Terrance Mc Minn
**Lecturer
*School of Built Environment
Curtin University of Technology
Phone: +618 9266 7175
Fax: +618 9266 2711
Let me know if I can help. I guess a web based would be the most widely accessible. I would certainly be willing to take a look widgets on Ubuntu Linux. I would also be happy to help out on a web based version as well and provide hosting presuming the hosting environment is suitable.
Best,
-Jack
···
--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction
Andy McNeil wrote:
Hi Jack,
Yes the inevitable question. I actually thought about mentioning portability in my original email, but thought that it was presumptuous to think that anyone other than me might actually want it. It is a silly tool after all, though not as silly as my original iphone app idea.
Mac widgets are html and javascript, so putting it on the web is easy in theory. I'll see if I can get it to work on the web, and then try to find a suitable home for it.
I think windows 7 has equivalent sidebar gadgets that are also html with javascript. Some Linux variants have a similar widget/gadget scheme. I'd be happy to share what I have with anyone who wants to create the same for another operating system, but I don't have easy access to windows 7 or a linux box, so I can't do that myself.
Best,
Andy
On Apr 30, 2010, at 12:01 PM, Jack de Valpine wrote:
Hi Andy,
OK, the inevitable... the question that you know had to come.... ;->
Is there any way to port this to Linux (and I suppose Windows)? Or perhaps port to something web based?
Best,
-Jack
--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction
Gregory J. Ward wrote:
Hi Andy,
This was more of a struggle than I expected. I don't know what I did with my old color wheel, so I tried to come up with an expression to generate a new one based on the Wikipedia page on HSV conversions. It's not quite what I was going for, but it's OK:
I just opened the main.html file of the widget in a few browsers. It
works fine on Safari (OS X) and Chrome (OS X).
Chrome on Windows 7 works but the labels are not visible (might be
related to my vm-ware shared drive). These labels are crated by
javascript which is unfortunately compacted and very hard to modify.
They could easily be made static which would make the widget/html
usable on Windows/Chrome, too.
Firefox shows the sliders as text fields. The sliders (as used) seem
to be a Webkit only feature. It should be easy to translate that to a
cross platform toolkit like jQuery. Dojo is already part of the mix
somehow.
All in all it seems trivial to produce a stand alone javascript
version of this.
Regards,
Thomas
···
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Let me know if I can help. I guess a web based would be the most widely
accessible.
You're right, it should be trivial. I tested the html file in safari and firefox over the weekend and came to the same conclusion regarding the sliders. I used dashcode to create the widget, so next step is to see if one of the other sliders in dashcode is generic javascript and not webkit.
I've also received feedback that it doesn't work in OSX 10.4 which is a bummer, and probably related to the webkit sliders.
I'm not sure what to do about the labels. dashcode has a nice drag and drop interface builder, and I don't remember there being many options for text but I'll look more closely tonight. Maybe there is an easy way to make the text static that I missed (like a checkbox or something).
Unfortunately my ability is currently limited by the capability dashcode (apple's IDE for dashboard widgets). I'm not the best person to develop a web tool. If there is someone with javascript and web development experience that is interested in adapting and enhancing the widget to a website I'd actively encourage them to do it. My plan is continue to develop it as a dashboard widget within dashcode but to remove and avoid webkit specific components (if possible). Hopefully avoiding webkit will allow it to function in most browsers.
Best,
Andy
···
On May 3, 2010, at 9:55 AM, Thomas Bleicher wrote:
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Let me know if I can help. I guess a web based would be the most widely
accessible.
I just opened the main.html file of the widget in a few browsers. It
works fine on Safari (OS X) and Chrome (OS X).
Chrome on Windows 7 works but the labels are not visible (might be
related to my vm-ware shared drive). These labels are crated by
javascript which is unfortunately compacted and very hard to modify.
They could easily be made static which would make the widget/html
usable on Windows/Chrome, too.
Firefox shows the sliders as text fields. The sliders (as used) seem
to be a Webkit only feature. It should be easy to translate that to a
cross platform toolkit like jQuery. Dojo is already part of the mix
somehow.
All in all it seems trivial to produce a stand alone javascript
version of this.
You're right, it should be trivial. I tested the html file in safari and firefox
over the weekend and came to the same conclusion regarding the sliders.
I used dashcode to create the widget, so next step is to see if one of the
other sliders in dashcode is generic javascript and not webkit.
The sliders seem to be generic javascript (files are in
/System/Library/WidgetResource/AppleClasses/) but the license limits
them to be used in Dashboard Widgets only. So for a browser/web based
page they have to be replaced.
I've also received feedback that it doesn't work in OSX 10.4 which
is a bummer, and probably related to the webkit sliders.
I'm not sure what to do about the labels.
The labels are no big deal. The static text can be placed in the main
html file. The surrounding DIVs are already there; they are just not
filled in by javascript.
Cheers,
Thomas
···
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 7:56 PM, Andy McNeil <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Andy, this is great! Looking forward to the iPhone app.....
I'm curious how / where you and others are obtaining / calculating the input values for Trans, specifically for the transmitted specular component? I've often found this (Tspec) a tough value to get or derive at as it's not measured for the LBNL, IDGB data base, nor by most glass and film manufactures.
You're right, it should be trivial. I tested the html file in safari and firefox over the weekend and came to the same conclusion regarding the sliders. I used dashcode to create the widget, so next step is to see if one of the other sliders in dashcode is generic javascript and not webkit.
I've also received feedback that it doesn't work in OSX 10.4 which is a bummer, and probably related to the webkit sliders.
I'm not sure what to do about the labels. dashcode has a nice drag and drop interface builder, and I don't remember there being many options for text but I'll look more closely tonight. Maybe there is an easy way to make the text static that I missed (like a checkbox or something).
Unfortunately my ability is currently limited by the capability dashcode (apple's IDE for dashboard widgets). I'm not the best person to develop a web tool. If there is someone with javascript and web development experience that is interested in adapting and enhancing the widget to a website I'd actively encourage them to do it. My plan is continue to develop it as a dashboard widget within dashcode but to remove and avoid webkit specific components (if possible). Hopefully avoiding webkit will allow it to function in most browsers.
Best,
Andy
On May 3, 2010, at 9:55 AM, Thomas Bleicher wrote:
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected]> >> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Let me know if I can help. I guess a web based would be the most widely
accessible.
I just opened the main.html file of the widget in a few browsers. It
works fine on Safari (OS X) and Chrome (OS X).
Chrome on Windows 7 works but the labels are not visible (might be
related to my vm-ware shared drive). These labels are crated by
javascript which is unfortunately compacted and very hard to modify.
They could easily be made static which would make the widget/html
usable on Windows/Chrome, too.
Firefox shows the sliders as text fields. The sliders (as used) seem
to be a Webkit only feature. It should be easy to translate that to a
cross platform toolkit like jQuery. Dojo is already part of the mix
somehow.
All in all it seems trivial to produce a stand alone javascript
version of this.
For blinds, in the past I've made a crude approximation using manufacturer's reported normal incidence data: http://www.hexcelscreen.com/xlscreen/index.htm
Ts = openfactor
Td = Tv - openfactor
However I've since learned that the typical measuring process does not measure the hemispherical transmission (the light exiting in all directions) but just the light exiting in the specular direction. So light transmission is under represented, especially for lighter colored fabrics.
If you want the manufacturer to provide test data there is a european standard that describes a blind measurement procedure for hemispherical transmission. I don't know the standard number, but perhaps someone else on the list knows what it is? This procedure only measures values for normal incidence though.
For the most accurate result at all incident angles you may need to abandon trans for mkillum with the new BSDF feature.
Hope that helps.
Andy
···
On May 5, 2010, at 10:19 AM, Chris Humann wrote:
Hi Andy, this is great! Looking forward to the iPhone app.....
I'm curious how / where you and others are obtaining / calculating the input values for Trans, specifically for the transmitted specular component? I've often found this (Tspec) a tough value to get or derive at as it's not measured for the LBNL, IDGB data base, nor by most glass and film manufactures.
You're right, it should be trivial. I tested the html file in safari and firefox over the weekend and came to the same conclusion regarding the sliders. I used dashcode to create the widget, so next step is to see if one of the other sliders in dashcode is generic javascript and not webkit.
I've also received feedback that it doesn't work in OSX 10.4 which is a bummer, and probably related to the webkit sliders.
I'm not sure what to do about the labels. dashcode has a nice drag and drop interface builder, and I don't remember there being many options for text but I'll look more closely tonight. Maybe there is an easy way to make the text static that I missed (like a checkbox or something).
Unfortunately my ability is currently limited by the capability dashcode (apple's IDE for dashboard widgets). I'm not the best person to develop a web tool. If there is someone with javascript and web development experience that is interested in adapting and enhancing the widget to a website I'd actively encourage them to do it. My plan is continue to develop it as a dashboard widget within dashcode but to remove and avoid webkit specific components (if possible). Hopefully avoiding webkit will allow it to function in most browsers.
Best,
Andy
On May 3, 2010, at 9:55 AM, Thomas Bleicher wrote:
On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Let me know if I can help. I guess a web based would be the most widely
accessible.
I just opened the main.html file of the widget in a few browsers. It
works fine on Safari (OS X) and Chrome (OS X).
Chrome on Windows 7 works but the labels are not visible (might be
related to my vm-ware shared drive). These labels are crated by
javascript which is unfortunately compacted and very hard to modify.
They could easily be made static which would make the widget/html
usable on Windows/Chrome, too.
Firefox shows the sliders as text fields. The sliders (as used) seem
to be a Webkit only feature. It should be easy to translate that to a
cross platform toolkit like jQuery. Dojo is already part of the mix
somehow.
All in all it seems trivial to produce a stand alone javascript
version of this.
If you want the manufacturer to provide test data there is a european standard that describes a blind measurement procedure for hemispherical transmission. I don't know the standard number, but perhaps someone else on the list knows what it is? This procedure only measures values for normal incidence though.
You would probably end up doing a full measurement of the bidirectional reflection / transmission distribution. Then you could use the data to e.g. fit a trans material to it. The normal incidence alone is not really suitable to reflect the incident distribution for a window...