su2ds

Introduction Su2ds is a Sketchup plug-in designed to facilitate building daylight modelling. It allows geometry created in Sketchup to be used for daylight analysis in Daysim, and for the numerical results of the Daysim analysis to be imported to and interpreted in Sketchup. This program is free software; that is, it can be redistributed or modified under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence. Su2ds was developed by Josh Kjenner of Manasc Isaac Architects in Edmonton, Alberta, with support from the National Research Councils (NRC) Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). It is based on su2rad, developed by Thomas Bleicher. Issues with su2ds can be reported at the projects Google Code site, found at http://code.google.com/p/su2ds/. Questions, suggestions, well-wishing, etc can be directed to jkjenner [at] manascisaac.com. Installation Installation of su2ds requires an installed Windows version of Google Sketchup, version 7 or higher. As well, although su2ds does not explicitly require this it would be advisable to have Daysim installed as well. Once you have Sketchup installed, su2ds can be installed using the following steps: 1 Download the su2ds install folder. 2 Install wxSU. This is another Sketchup plug-in thats used in su2ds to provide several user interface elements. The installer for the latest Windows version is included in the su2ds install folder. Alternatively, it can be downloaded at http://wxsu.sourceforge.net/. 3 optional WxSU, when installed, adds a couple of items to Sketchups Plugins menu ( wxSU Documentation and wxSU Examples) that arent particularly useful to people not planning on developing Sketchup plug-in user interfaces. You can remove these items by navigating to Sketchups Plugins folder (C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Plugins is a typical location) and deleting wxSU-Documentation.rb, wxSU-Examples.rb, and the wxSU-Examples folder. 4 Unzip su2ds.zip (found in the su2ds install folder) in Sketchups Plugins folder. 5 optional A materials library developed by the NRC for Daysim is included in each Daysim installation. A corresponding library Su2ds in its current form works in OS X with little modification, but there is currently no OS X version of Daysim It may work with earlier versions of Sketchup, but I havent tried. Google Sketchup can be downloaded for free here. Version 2. can be found at here, while the pre-release version 3.0 can be found at here. Daysim is a Radiance-based daylight analysis program. For a more detailed description, see here. See here.

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for Sketchup can be installed by expanding DaysimMaterialsforSketchup.zip (found in the su2ds install folder) in the Sketchup Materials folder (C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7\Materials is a typical location). Rename the expanded folder Daysim. Tutorial The following tutorial is meant to demonstrate all of su2ds features, and thus should serve as something of feature reference as well. In this tutorial, a simple building will be created in Sketchup and exported to Daysim for analysis. The results of this analysis will then be imported back into the Sketchup model. Before beginning the tutorial, open the su2ds preferences menu (Plugins > su2ds > Preferences) and select your Daysim version. 1 Create model geometry and assign materials Create your models geometry, as in Figure . More information on the options in the preferences menu can be found on the last page of this document, but the default settings will likely suffice for every field save for this one.

Figure  Open the Sketchup materials palette (Window > Materials). Make sure the Select tab is selected, and select Daysim from the pulldown menu. Apply the resultant materials to your model as appropriate, as shown in Figure 2. Before proceeding, its advisable to complete one more step. In Radiance (which Daysim uses to complete its daylight calculations), individual faces can only be assigned one material, the properties of which are assigned to the faces front and back sides. However, in

Figure 2 Sketchup, the front and back sides of a face can be assigned different materials. Su2ds includes a feature to avoid errors that may arise from this inconsistency. Select Plugins > su2ds > Material > count conflicts. A message box will appear listing the number of faces that have different materials on their front and back faces. To correct these conflicts, select Plugins > su2ds > Material > resolve conflicts. Faces on which one sides material is user-assigned and the other sides has not been modified will have both sides changed to the user-assigned material. Faces with user-assigned materials on both sides will have the back-side material set equal to the front-side material. A message will appear listing the number of faces on which this correction has been made. 2 Set location information. Select Plugins > su2ds > Set location. A window will appear prompting you for your projects geographic information. This information is used to write the Daysim header file. Enter information as appropriate. If youre using Daysim 2., you can easily rotate your entire geometry by modifying the north field. (If youre using Daysim 3.0, this is done within Daysim). Changing the show north option to true will display the north axis within your model. 3 Create a sensor point mesh Daysim calculates its daylight metrics at discrete points, as opposed to calculating them for a room or space. Thus, to determine the daylight performance of a space, we must first discretize it; that is, create a series of sample points that characterize the spaces geometry. To cre-

The Daysim input file is referred to as the header file.

ate a sensor point mesh using su2ds, first create a new layer. Its easiest to call this layer points, but you can call it whatever you like. Make this later your active layer. Next, draw a face (or series of faces) representing the area which you would like discretized. Generally, this face will cover the extent of the floor area of the space youre examining, and will be located at some height above floor level. The height depends on the location of the spaces task plane, which is dictated by the spaces use. As an example, for offices the task plane is typically located about 0.8 m above the floor surface. There are many ways to draw this face. Note that you can include multiple faces, faces with holes, faces in groups or nested groups, and faces at different heights. Figure 3 shows this face drawn the in context of the above example (with a section plane used to improve visibility). Select Plugins > su2ds > Create sensor point mesh. A box will appear prompting you for two inputs. The first is the name of layer on which the face(s) youd like to discretize reside. The second field controls the point spacing. The spacing is specified in metres, and should convert correctly regardless of what unit system your model uses (ie, if it uses inches and you specify a spacing of  m, the points will be 39. in apart).

For guidance on selecting task plane heights, see The IESNA Lighting Handbook.

The points created using during this step form a structured, orthogonal mesh, and this represents the spacing between points in both orthogonal directions.

Figure 3 Clicking okay will create the point mesh. You can adjust the spacing by simply running the command again. (Note that to see the points, you must have guides visible). Figure  shows the example case with a point mesh drawn.

Figure  4 Save model This would probably be a good time to save you model. Mentioning this may seem a bit pedantic, but there is something important to know here: if possible, save your model in a directory without spaces in its path and dont put any spaces in the models name. Although they can be manually adjusted, the paths of the Daysim header file youll generate in the next step are, by default, generated based on the path of your model, and Daysim does not allow these paths to contain spaces. So, its generally easiest to just stick to this rule when saving your Sketchup model.  Create header file Now that youve specified your geometry, materials, location, and sensor point mesh, youre ready for Daysim analysis. Su2ds will export all visible layers, so make sure to turn off the layer you used to create your points mesh. Select Plugins > su2ds > Export Daysim header file. A dialog will appear with several fields. Project directory is pretty self-explanatory. Within the project directory, a folder will created to hold the files from this particular export; this folder and the files within it will be named as per the entry in the project name field. As mentioned above, neither of these fields should contain spaces. The path of the weather file to be used for the analysis is to be specified in the weather file field. This path should be specified absolutely, ie C:\temp\edmonton.wea. Weather files can be specified in either Daysim (.wea) format, or EnergyPlus (.epw) format; EnergyPlus format files will be automatically converted to Daysim format. Selecting yes in the use present location dialog will confirm that Adding a graphic file chooser here is the first priority for further development A repository of EnergyPlus weather files can be found here.

you want to use the location information you entered earlier; selecting no will bring up the location dialog after OK is selected. Finally, if you elect to triangulate, the faces comprising your buildings geometry will all be converted to meshes of triangles prior to export. When the above fields are specified, click OK to export the Daysim header file. This will create five files: A weather file, copied from the specified location to the project folder A points file (.pts) describing the sensor point mesh A Radiance file (.rad) describing the project geometry and materials A Daysim header file (.hea) describing the project. This file references the above three files. A log file (.log) containing messages generated by su2ds during export. 6 Conduct Daysim analysis Open Daysim, and select File > Open project. Select the header file created during the previous step. Your project will be loaded into Daysim. The procedures for conducting a Daysim analysis have been described elsewhere (see the Getting Started section here. After the analysis is complete, proceed to the next step. 7 Import Daysim analysis results Daysim calculates a number of daylight metrics, including Daylight Factor and a number of dynamic daylighting metrics including Daylight Autonomy, Useful Daylight Illuminance, and others. The results of these calculations are stored in files that can be imported to and displayed in Sketchup using su2ds. Select Plugins > su2ds > Import Daysim results. Navigate to the folder that contains the Daysim header file produced in step . Within this folder, there should now be a folder called res within which the results files generated by Daysim reside. These files are named according to the following convention:
<project name>.<daylighting metric name>.DA

For a detailed discussion of dynamic daylighting metrics, see here.

Select a file of this type and click open. A coloured grid representing the distribution of the selected metric over the sensor point mesh will be drawn and added to its own layer. As well, a scale to aid in interpreting the results will be produced, and a palette for manipulating the display of the results will appear. This is shown in Figure .

Figure  The display of these results can be customized using various means. First, rename the layer on which the results grid resides (called results by default). This change will be reflected in the results scale. Next, rescale the grid by adjusting the numbers in the max and min fields of the Results Controls palette and click redraw. Finally, click display average value to display the value of the selected metric averaged over the points mesh. Figure  shows the example model with these adjustments made, and the view manipulated to better illustrate the metric distribution with the space.

Figure  Users will notice that the results scale will sometimes disappear when manipulating the model view, and will always disappear when a tool is

selected. It can be restored by clicking the show scale button in the Results Controls palette. Also, if this palette is closed, it can be shown again by selecting Plugins > su2ds > Show results palette. 8 optional Adjust preferences Su2ds contains a dialog that allows users to adjust general operational preferences. This can be accessed by selected Plugins > su2ds > Preferences. Daysim version sets the version of Daysim that su2ds will create header files for and import results from. Log level refers to the level of detail reported to the log file. Triangulate faces simply sets the default option for the triangulate field of the menu that appears when exporting a Daysim header file. Unit sets the conversion between native Sketchup units (inches) and the export units. Because Radiance geometry is specified in metres, this field defaults to the metre: inch conversion value. Dont change this unless you have a really good reason. Supportdir is the path of the support directory for your Sketchup installation. On a typical installation, this will be C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7. If update library is set to true, during export su2ds will convert exported materials from your Sketchup installations Materials directory to Radiance format and add the .rad files to the directory of the original material for future reference. Binary path specifies the location of binary directory of your Day Daysim 2. and Daysim 3.0 handle model rotation differently, which slightly affects the way header files are written and results are imported.