External Building Aerodynamics

Note: This is a Windows only plugin

SimScale-Grasshopper plugin

The use case this plugin is currenty developed for is to visulise SimScale results for wind speed within the Rhino environment using grasshopper. This use case includes also doing additional post processing to the results using Ladybug tools to produce outdoor thermal comfort parameters. We include a some examples of how this can be done, but its by no means an extensive overview of what can be done, and some expertise using Ladybug tools is recomended to perform the outdoor comfort calulations.

SimScale developed this plugin to help our users in the AEC industry to get more out of the results, and we see this plugin as a community contribution, where the coomunity is equally welcomed to maintain and improve it.

Installation - installer

1. Download the latest .zip file from here
2. Unzip the folder latest_stable.zip. Some systems extract .zip folders automatically upon download, so only do this step if necessary.
3. double click the installer.exe
4. Download the API key file example .simscale_api_keys.yaml from here Note: Its really important to ensure the name is .simscale_api_keys.yaml, some times the dot "." prefixed to the begining of the file name is removed by your system, it needs re-introducing, and signifies a hidden file.
5. Copy the key file to the user's home directory, open it in a text editor, and paste your API key where indicated, from your SimScale account. Note: The home directory can be found by typing the command echo %userprofile% into a command terminal, its usually C:\Users\<CurrentUserName> Note: For more information on generating API keys in SimScale, see this guide.
6. Restart Rhino and Grasshopper. This is requred so that Rhino and grasshopper scan the plugin files upon opening and introduce the plugin under the name SimScale to grasshopper.
7. Install Ladybug tools, usually the best way to do this is running the pollination installer found here.
8. For Rhino 8 ONLY, open Rhino 8, and type SetDotNetRuntime choose r (for Runtime) and then e (for NETFramework), close and restart Rhino 8.

Installation - Manual

1. Download the latest .zip file from here
2. Unzip the folder latest_stable.zip, you will see multiple .gha and .dll files within the src folder. Some systems extract .zip folders automatically upon download, so only do this step if necessary.
3. Copy the files to Grasshopper’s components folder, this folder structure is usually found in your home directory:
   HOME/AppData/Roaming/Grasshopper/Libraries Note: This is a hidden folder, so you may need to make it visible, on win10 view>Show/Hide>Hidden items=True Note: The home directory can be found by typing the command echo %userprofile% into a command terminal, its usually C:\Users\<CurrentUserName> making the location C:\Users\<CurrentUserName>/AppData/Roaming/Grasshopper/Libraries
4. Download the API key file example .simscale_api_keys.yaml from here Note: Its really important to ensure the name is .simscale_api_keys.yaml, some times the dot "." prefixed to the begining of the file name is removed by your system, it needs re-introducing, and signifies a hidden file.
5. Copy the key file to the user's home directory, open it in a text editor, and paste your API key where indicated, from your SimScale account. Note: The home directory can be found by typing the command echo %userprofile% into a command terminal, its usually C:\Users\<CurrentUserName> Note: For more information on generating API keys in SimScale, see this guide.
6. Restart Rhino and Grasshopper. This is requred so that Rhino and grasshopper scan the plugin files upon opening and introduce the plugin under the name SimScale to grasshopper.
7. Install Ladybug tools, usually the best way to do this is running the pollination installer found here.
8. For Rhino 8 ONLY, open Rhino 8, and type SetDotNetRuntime choose r (for Runtime) and then e (for NETFramework), close and restart Rhino 8.

Examples

1. basic.gh - A very basic visulisation of wind speed, given a reference speed and direction
2. basic_humantosky_example.gh - This is the example of outdoor thermal comfort most easy to comprehend, with little complexities surrounding it. It is however rather slow to compute and we consider this a stepping stone in one ones learning journey
3. basic_radiance_example - Not yet developed

First run

1. Download the geometry file Boston.3dm file from here
2. Download the application example basic.gh from here
3. Open the geometry file in Rhino, then open Grasshopper, there should be a SimScale tab Note: Ensure the model units in the Rhino settings are in meters, if using Rhino 8, this should be meters for both model and layout
4. Open the example basic.gh
5. If you have a conflicting version of Ladybug tools (The "LB Spatial Heatmap" is a Ladybug component, if its showing old, simply update it to comply with your Ladybug tools version).
6. Set Project="Boston - WCD 2022", Simulation="Design 1", Simulation Run="Run 1" Note: this project should be owned by you in SimScale, on the account from which you are addressing with the API key. The project is public, just copy it from here keep the name the same, remove the " - copy" part
7. Toggle the boolean toggle connected to the Download component
8. You should, after the process completes, see wind speed in the Rhino viewer, overlaid onto the geometry for context