[Bldg-sim] Sketchup <--> Demeter Feedback/Experience

Nick Caton ncaton at smithboucher.com
Fri Sep 4 15:02:16 PDT 2009


Hi Malcolm,

 

Thanks very much for your considerate and informative reply.  I'm very excited to hear about the evolution of Demeter into something much more developed and will certainly be signing up to give the alpha Greenspace Live suite a test-drive!  The development of a solid Sketchup à TRNSYS bridge  is also very exciting news.

 

I can't speak for everyone here, but I've personally found the [bldg-sim] and other mailing lists hosted at onebuilding.org to be an invaluable source for both technical support from developers/end-users and keeping up to speed with new products and their updates in functionality.  It's my hope the Greenspace team will continue to announce major developments here so individuals such as myself won't miss something important =).

 

Best wishes, 


~Nick

 

 

 

NICK CATON, E.I.T.

PROJECT ENGINEER

25501 west valley parkway

olathe ks 66061

direct 913 344.0036

fax 913 345.0617

Check out our new web-site @ www.smithboucher.com 

 

From: Malcolm Murray [mailto:malcolm.murray at lews.uhi.ac.uk] 
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 6:24 AM
To: Nick Caton; bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Cc: Donald I. Macdonald; Macritchie, Donald
Subject: Re: Fwd: [Bldg-sim] Sketchup <--> Demeter Feedback/Experience

 

Hello Mr Caton and all on the BLDG-Sim mailing list,

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions regarding the Demeter tool and thanks for your continued use of the tool.

As my colleague Donald I Macdonald posted on the Bldg-Sim mailing list yesterday, we have now released a new version of our SketchUp plugin now called LiveEnergy as part of our Greenspace Live suite. The currently released version of the LiveEnergy is entitled LiveEnergy Modeller and allows for the import and export of gbXML files from Google SketchUp, which can then be used in a variety of tools such as our own LiveEnergy EPC tool and other energy analysis software. LiveEnergy Modeller does not currently have GBS enabled directly from the interface, but this is something we may introduce at a later date, we are also working on a version to work with TRNSYS (for more details see the paper recently presented at the Building Simulation 2009 conference: http://www.ibpsa.org/proceedings/BS2009/BS09_1389_1396.pdf).

We have also released training materials (including tutorial videos) on our website, and have set up a new discussion forum. These can all be accessed on our website at: http://greenspacelive.com where the tools can also be downloaded.

I will now address some of the feedback / issues highlighted in your email.

*	Compatibility with other SketchUp plugins: We have made some efforts in this latest version of the plugin to package the codebase more effectively, so that we shouldn't have as many issues with incompatibilites with other plugins. However, we would be grateful if any compatibility issues arising with other plugins could be reported on our forum so that we can be aware of them. There is also now an option to disable LiveEnergy Modeller from the Google Extensions manager (in the settings window) without uninstalling the plugin.
*	Space Selection: We have now introduced a "semi-automatic" method of selecting spaces. You can now use our "Select Space" tool to simply click on the floor surface of each space and then the enclosing walls should be automatically selected. Spaces are then confirmed by pressing the "Confirm Space" button. This also allows you to manually select which surfaces go into the space so that the user still has the same level of control as before. A "Find Spaces" command is an interesting idea and something we may include in a future version.
*	Cube Interface Size: Our new LiveEnergy interface has been cleaned up, and is no longer a 3D cube. The interface is also much smaller by default, but can be maximised when you need to get into the detailed user interface / construction libraries etc. Much of the emphasis when building a model is now on using SketchUp materials and tools to create the energy model, and not so much in the LiveEnergy interface.
*	GBS Operation: GBS operation has been disabled in this current version of LiveEnergy. The reason why it will no longer work with Demeter, is that the URLs for GBS have changed to Autodesk ones. We have not updated Demeter to account for this, as we have been concentrating on developing the new LiveEnergy Modeller.
*	XML File Extension:  This is has proved to be a challenge due to the SketchUp api, but is something we will develop.
*	Installer Defaults to SketchUp 6: The LiveEnergy installer now defaults to SketchUp 7.
*	Geometry Problems in the gbXML: The gbXML creation should now be significantly improved.
*	Plane Up / Plane Down etc: These options were designed to raise and lower the active section plane when assigning spaces to the internal surfaces etc. This has now been replaced by a single tool "Move Plane" that allows you to move the active plane up and down using the mouse without deselecting surfaces. The "Space Definition" window is no more (although there is a list of spaces in the "Building Envelope" window).
*	Surface Definition: This has now been replaced by a new system using the SketchUp materials pallette that we think is more intuitive and should be more familiar to SketchUp users - you now "paint" the surface type onto each surface. As a way of automatically doing this is something we can look into for a future version.

News and updates about our tools as well as support information etc can all be found on our new website at http://greenspacelive.com

All our tools are currently at an "alpha" stage of development, and are currently all available free of charge on this basis until the 31st of October 2009. Anyone can now sign up to our website and get access to our whole suite including LiveEnergy Modeller and LiveEnergy EPC. We would greatly appreciate your feedback regarding these tools.

I hope I have answered all your questions, but if you have any more enquiries please feel free to get in touch, or post an enquiry on our forum.

Best Regards and thanks for your interest,
Malcolm Murray




___________________
Malcolm Murray
PhD Student
Greenspace Research
UHI Millennium Institute
Lews Castle College
Stornoway,
Isle of Lewis
Scotland, UK



Donald Macritchie wrote: 

 
  

			"Nick Caton" <ncaton at smithboucher.com> <mailto:ncaton at smithboucher.com>  02/09/2009 22:35 >>>
			        

Hello Dr. Finlayson,
 
 
 
For whatever reason, I'm having a lot of difficulty searching for
answers to my Demeter inquries through google sketchup groups / bldg-sim
archives / Demeter forums (are they even up?)... and it occurred to me
there simply might not be much discussion out there to look for!  This
email should go a long way to remedy that!
 
 
 
I have some feedback  for your team in the form of constructive
criticism and issues I've had, along with a few related questions.
Overall, I really like what I see so far, though I understand the
project is still under development (the current version hosted on the
website is 0.8.9.2, for anyone following along).  I'll throw out that my
feedback is colored from the perspective I've gained after some
successful experiences working with the free plugin from IES, which ties
into their commercial energy modeling software packages in much the same
way that Demeter is tied to Green Building Studio.  
 
 
 
I'm also copying this feedback to the [bldg-sim] mailing list to spark
some further Demeter discussion/feedback and to request other end-users'
workarounds/experiences for our collective benefit.  It's my hope that
the IES VE-Ware sketchup plugin development team will also review these
points as both tools have some key things to learn from each other...
Any responses you've got addressing these points would be good to post
on [bldg-sim] as well, I'd imagine.
 
 
 
Feedback/Issues encountered:
 
 
 
+             As you may be well aware, one cannot have the IES Sketchup
plugin and the Demeter plugin installed at the same time without
sketchup crashing at every startup.  While one might speculate that you
two development teams might want that, being "competing" products (?), I
think it would be appropriate to recognize that users like myself who
might wish to explore Demeter/GBS vs. IES/IES-VEWare get annoyed when we
have to uninstall/reinstall software to do our jobs.  Ideally I'd like
both installed at the moment anyway - see my next point...
 
 
 
+             Something to note:  There is a real and interesting
contrast in the manner of defining spaces between the IES and Demeter
plugin.  Demeter's capability to "check contiguity" for enclosed
volumes, and to highlight planes that are out-of-whack for ease in
correcting the issue is wonderful.  The IES plugin's approach of "find
spaces" on the other hand is MUCH less tedious than having to manually
select every plane enclosing a space, without an opportunity to correct
one's selection if you accidentally miss or include a stray plane.
Ideally, I think both plugins ought to learn from each other and create
a "find spaces" command that, perhaps with an option ticked, might
perform that function while additionally subsequently highlighting any
and all non-contiguous planes to the defined volumes.  Wouldn't life be
grand? =)
 
 
 
+             The cube user interface is altogether nifty and
functional.  One major improvement however, for those of us without
large displays (Mine runs at 1280x1024), would be to have the option to
have the interface "auto-hide" until one mouses-over the top of the
window.  As it is the model interface window uses up half of my working
space, making it kinda difficult to manipulate my model views to
correctly select/de-select faces for defining the spaces.
 
 
 
+             I cannot get the "energy analyse" cube-face to operate
correctly with GBS.  It gives me an error consistently telling me
"Webserver Logon Failed."  Any thoughts?
 
 
 
+             (Nitpick) Whenever I export an xml file using the
interface or plugin drop-down feature, the resulting file has no
extension.  Adding .xml however allows GBS desktop to recognize the file
for importing.
 
 
 
+             (Nitpick) The installer I have tries by default to install
to a Google Sketchup 6 directory.  I'm using version 7 (this may be the
root of some of my other issues).  It'd be nice/convenient if the
installer could figure that out on its own what is the appropriate
directory.
 
 
 
+             Once the exported .xml file is selected in the appropriate
GBS desktop field, I cannot successfully complete a run.  Trying to view
the model in VRML results in an error reading "geometry is not a field
of Material."  I suspect incompatible versions of sketchup/GBS/Demeter
is the root of this issue...?
 
 
 
+             Back to the UI:  The "Space Definition" face of the cube
has three buttons whose function I have not been able to figure out, nor
find documentation explaining their purpose.  Plane Up / Plane Down /
Plane Tool.  If they are intended to be some alternative to manually
selecting each face of a volume, that would be a step in the right
direction for ease of use (see above).
 
 
 
+             Regarding the "Surface Definition" face of the cube...
here I have to get more critical.  The first model I tried this out on
has something like 600+ faces.  Your interface does not allow one to
define more than one face at a time.  One should be able to first select
and change an entire space's face properties as a group, and
subsequently be able to select multiple faces at a time to change their
properties.  I hate to sound partial to IES but it sure is nice that the
IES plugin figures out what is a floor vs. a roof vs. an
interior/exterior wall automatically (though to what degree of accuracy
I've not ascertained)...  Something that both automatically guesses
(with some accuracy) surface definitions, while allowing the end-user to
easily review and edit those properties would be ideal for both plugins.
 
 
 
+             While I obviously am having trouble getting GBS to play
nicely with Demeter, I'm very hopeful that a successfully created .inp
file from GBS, originating from a Sketchup/Demeter model, will correctly
and accurately be importable into eQuest, where a good number of us
energy modelers get a lot of "post-preliminary-design-stage" work done.
That would bridge a long-desired path I've had regarding establishing a
workflow from Sketchup --> eQuest.  Previous mailing list postings have
indicated this is a possibility, but as it stands with whatever
combination of compatibility/end-user (me) issues exist, I've yet to see
this pull through with my own eyes.  I hope GBS's ties with Autodesk's
Ecotect product won't impair this possibility in the future.
 
 
 
+             On that note, could you clarify for myself and others the
relationship that exists between the development teams for Demeter
(Green Space Research) Green Building Studio, and Autodesk's Ecotect
software?  To what extent might the goals of one group
influence/restrict the others?
 
 
 
+             Is there a mailing list one can join to be notified
if/when new versions of Demeter are developed?
 
 
 
I hope this feedback is useful to many, and would encourage other users
of Sketchup/Demeter/IES/GBS to chime in with their thoughts and
experiences!  
 
 
 
~Nick
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NICK CATON, E.I.T.
 
PROJECT ENGINEER
 
25501 west valley parkway
 
olathe ks 66061
 
direct 913 344.0036
 
fax 913 345.0617
 
Check out our new web-site @ www.smithboucher.com 
 
 
 
  
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