GH Climate Studio Lab Notes:

Topics To Cover:

1. Downloading Climate Studio
2. Getting Started
3. General Workflows

Hello Everyone, Welcome to Climate Studio!

Below is everything that you will need to know to start using Climate Studio for radiance analysis, site analysis, and for building efficiency modeling.

Downloading Climate Studio:

1. Unlike most of the software in this course, Climate Studio isn’t yet openly available to the public. To receive free student access you will need to be put in touch with the University of Oregon license administrator. Reach out to your GE or Professor for more information.
2. Upon being granted access to Climate Studio you will receive an email from education@solemma.com or from the license admin. Click the download link in the email and notice the link to all of the tutorial materials available on solemma.com.
3. Download the zipped file and unblock it by right clicking on the file and going to Properties, if there is a checkbox at the bottom right of the window labeled unblock you can check it and press “OK.” If there is no checkbox, proceed to the next step.
4. Unzip the file by right clicking it and selecting the appropriate option.
5. Follow the up-to-date instructions in the folder’s readme.txt file.
6. Open Rhino and enable the Climate Studio toolbar. Type ‘toolbar’ in the Rhino command line and select the checkbox for ClimateStudio under the ClimateStudioRhino file. Click “OK.”

Using Climate Studio in Rhino:

To begin using Climate Studio we need to find the toolbar panel. The default panel is shown below:

Site Analysis:

By default Climate Studio also provides a viewport compass in the bottom right of the screen. This compass and basic information about your chosen location can be seen on the default Site Analysis screen.
The Site Analysis panel, which can be shown be selecting it from the dropdown menu in the toolbar, provides 5 main tools for us:

1. The 3D Sun Path Tool is a basic plugin that allows you to see the direction and angle of the sun on your site throughout the year. The drop-down menus have preset values for the solstices, equinoxes, and the 3 main design times of 9am, 12pm, and 3pm. You can also adjust the sliders to find other times and press the printer button to capture a shot of the sun chart to your computer:
   
2. The 3D Wind Rose can superimpose a colored compass on your viewport that allows you to see where the wind will be blowing on your site throughout specific points of the year. By default the rose shows averages throughout the entire year, but the sliders can be used to find average directions and magnitudes for specific seasons or even hours of the day.
   
3. The Chart tab shows by default the Dry Bulb Temperature, Wet Bulb Temperature, Direct Normal Radiation, Diffuse Horizontal Radiation, and Global Horizontal Radiation. Individual graphs can be hidden by clicking the appropriate color in the legend and the graph can be saved as an image with the printer icon.
   
4. The Psychometric Chart allows you to see how often temperatures with specific humidities occur throughout the year. This can be invaluable when attempting to understand a holistic picture of your site in one image.
   
5. Finally, the UTCI graph shows how temperature might effect the human body throughout the year. Each color is connected to a projected outcome ranging from Extreme Cold Stress to Extreme Heat Stress. The numbers show how many hours of each step would occur throughout each year in your climate. This graph can also be exported using the printer icon.
   

Point in Time Illuminance, Daylight Availability, Annual Glare, Radiance Rendering, Thermal Analysis, Radiation Map, View Analysis:

Each of the above tabs corresponds to a specific type of daylight simulation that you can run within Climate Studio. While the nuts and bolts of each of these tests is out of the purview of this particular class, we would urge you to tinker with these tools if you are interested. Documentation is available on the solemma.com website. There are also several classes at UO that go in-depth on these topics, including the ECS classes that most of you are required to take. These tools allow you to understand how small changes in structure can create dramatic changes in the thermal comfort, light permeation, and visual interest of your spaces.

Using Climate Studio in Grasshopper for Rhino:

Climate Studio in Grasshopper is where the power within this plug-in is mixed with the parametric processing that Grasshopper is famous for. For this section we have worked with the resources from Solemma to create a relatively simple yet powerful ClimateStudio.gh file for you to use. This template file is full of scripts and examples that you can view, test, and substitute your own models into when you’re ready to see how they perform.

Here is an overview of the included scripts:

1. Site Analysis: This group of scripts allows you to do much of the functionality shown in the Rhino section of this guide. The main benefit of this script is being able to then use this data as an output that can be sent to other components.
   1. To begin using this script, click the “Search” button in the farthest left component. This will bring up a window in Rhino that allows you to search for a location and download the corresponding TMYx file containing average yearly weather data for the region. For this tutorial we have set our location to Eugene.AP-Sweet.Field as this is the nearest dataset to the University of Oregon.
      
   2. Below the Sun Path script is a trio of scripts that output images or PDFs of the charts shown in the previous section: Diurnal Averages, Wind Roses, and Psychometric Charts.
   3. To run these you will need to place a file path in the left-most yellow panel. This tells the script where to place the created images.
   4. Finally, simply press the “Run” button and the image will be calculated and placed in the corresponding location. To change the resolution or file type of the image, simply change the input values attached to PNG/PDF, W, and H.
2. Site Solar Analysis: This script is incredibly powerful when researching how much sunlight reaches the ground of your site during specific periods throughout the year.
   1. To preview the geometry used as an example in the script, right click and select preview on the two components with red boxes around them. The first component, titled “mesh” will show the outline or “plane” that makes up the site footprint. The blue “Analysis Space Outline” component contains the curve that makes this plane and can be substituted for your own outline when you’re ready to analyze your own site.
      
   2. The second component, titled “MJoin” is a group of meshes that make up the context around the site. The purpose of this geometry is to ‘block’ the virtual sunlight from reaching the model. The mesh component in blue contains this group of meshes and can be substituted for your own site context when you have it built; as with most things in solar analysis, the more precise this context is, the more accurate the results will be.
      
   3. To see the final results you can preview on the last two components in this script, both colored green. The “MCol” component contains a colored mesh corresponding to the amount of light received, and the “Tag” component shows exact values on the mesh that show how many hours that particular spot of ground will receive sunlight during the chosen day.
      
3. Structure Solar Analysis: Similar to the script above, this one allows you to see how much sunlight reaches an object throughout a year. The main difference is that this script is designed to output the thermal load that this solar radiation will create on a structure.
   1. To preview the geometries used in this calculation, right click and preview the three components with red boxes. The first component contains meshes for the context structures within the site. The second contains a mesh ground plane for the site. The third contains a mesh that represents the simplified mass of the building itself.
      
   2. To run the simulation, make sure that you have chosen a weather file in the Site Analysis script that corresponds to the site you would like to analyze. Next, press the blue “Run” and a window will appear while Climate Studio calculates the yearly data.
      
   3. Once the window closes, you can preview the data by right clicking the “PreviewGrid” component within the green rectangle. The numerical data will also be output in the bottom panel to the right of this component, including the name of each analysis surface in the top panel.
      
4. Simple Office Templates: This group of templates is more complex than what you will need for this class. It is included as these calculations could be useful during your time here at UO, and can provide incredibly insight about how your spaces function during the design process. More information about the terminology will be explored during your ECS classes, and information about how the scripts work – including how to substitute your own geometry – is available on the Solemma website. You can also contact your professor or imm@uoregon.edu if you would like assistance getting your own models to run.
   
   1. Included in this template is an example file of a simple office room. To preview the geometry used in these calculations you can right click and preview the 4 components (you can also preview the Ceiling but it makes it difficult to see inside) surrounded by the red rectangle. Each of these components contain a specific type of geometry and labeled with the white panel. The geometry is separated because different parts of a room have different materials and thus need specific reflectance values.
      
   2. Spatial Daylight Autonomy: This calculation shows how much of your space hits the lower requirement of daylight to facilitate ‘work.’ This essentially means that enough light reaches inside the space for it to be usable during the workday, without the need for electric lights.
      To run this calculation you simply need to click the blue “Run” button, let the calculation run, and then preview the results. The results are shown in the “PreviewGrid” component surrounded by the green rectangle.
      
   3. Annual Glare: This calculation shows directional glare information about the interior of the space. The result will be a grid of circles comprised of colored wedges, and each color represents an intensity of glare, with the direction of the wedge showing the direction a person could be looking. If you see a wedge that is red, it tells you that if you stand in that spot and look in the direction of the wedge from the center of its circle, you will see glare throughout your work day.
      To run this calculation you simply need to click the blue “Run” button, let the calculation run, and then preview the results. The results are shown in the “PreviewGrid” component surrounded by the green rectangle.
      
   4. Illuminance: This calculation runs differently than the other two above as it also includes electric lights. The purpose of this test is to see how evenly ‘lit’ a space will be with your proposed lighting strategy.
      To view the lights, usually called ‘luminaires,’ you can right click and preview the last left component with a red rectangle titled “Luminaire.” This produces 9 yellow orbs representing rectangular lights in the office’s celiling, the orbs representing the throw pattern of the light (which can be changed by using the dropdown menu titled IES on the Luminaire component.
      
      To run this calculation you simply need to click the blue “Run” button, let the calculation run, and then preview the results. The results are shown in the “PreviewGrid” component surrounded by the green rectangle.
      
5. Radiance Render – Simple Office: This final template creates a mathematical ‘photo’ of how light reflects and acts within your space. The technique shown here is different than those found in other rendering programs like Enscape, Lumion, or Twinmotion, and most resembles the raytracing found in Vray or Maxwell.
   
   1. To preview the scene geometry you can right click the “SceneLayer” component surrounded by the red rectangle and select preview. Note that this geometry is more complicated than the “Simple Office” scene used above and now includes furniture and props.
      
   2. To run the simulation you can click the blue “Run” button and a window will pop up. This can often take a while to complete depending on your computer. The reason for this is that the program is calculating the indivual ‘photons’ of light within the scene – this is why Radiance renders are considered mathematically “provable” and often used for scientific research.
      The output of this script is shown in the two large image components at the right of the script. The top image is a black & white render representing the light scatter in the image.
      
      The bottom image is a false-color graphic showing the quantitative amount of light correlated to a rainbow gradient. Magenta is the ‘brightest’ light in the scene, and it goes down the color spectrum until it circles back to darkest blue – the darkest light in the scene.
      
   3. This script also allows you to set a specific Month, Day, and Hour for the calculation to occur. Play around with the 3 sliders labeled “Sun Location” that plug in to the Sky component to see how lighting conditions change throughout the year.