Building performance simulation in architectural design platform, Rhino Grasshopper

Rhino is one of the most popular architectural design programs, especial for early-phase design. It is a 3D modeling and rendering software that is used to create, edit, analyze, document, render, animate, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces, and solids in Windows. Grasshopper is a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. It allows designers to create complex forms quickly and intuitively by building up a definition of mathematical and geometric expressions, or algorithms, using graphical programming components called “components”. Due to the increasing demand of green building design (or sustaibable design), building performance simulation is becoming more and more important in early-phase design.

There have been several building performance simulation plugins developed for Rhino, such as Ladybug and Honeybee on building energy and daylighting analysis (built with EnergyPlus, OpenStudio, and Radiance), Butterfly on computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations using OpenFOAM, Dragonfly on energy simulation with URBANopt, electrical electrical infrastructure simulation with OpenDSS, renewables optimization with REopt, and urban heat island (UHI) modeling with the Urban Weather Generator (UWG), and umi on environmental performance evaluation of neighborhoods and cities with respect to operational and embodied energy use, neighborhood walkability, access to daylighting, urban food production and district-level energy supply analysis.

This project developed building performance simulation plugins for Rhino Grasshopper, which can be used to simulate building energy and IAQ performance. The plugins are developed in C#.