WEB APPS
Site Designer
This web app extends my dynamic daylighting tool to bring shading, solar radiation and view analysis to the level of an entire site rather than just a single room. It uses the same framework and infrastructure as the daylight tool, but with some more interesting snapping, editing and model generation functions. This means that it uses the same block-optimised ray-tracing routines, so the geometry is still limited to axially-aligned rectilinear blocks. However, I have added an experimental constructive solid geometry (CSG) model to automatically merge intersecting blocks into more complex shapes so that the intersecting edges are not shown. Another distinguishing feature is the ability to add multiple analysis grids, both flat and volumetric, and to automatically fit them to selected surfaces or volumes.
Dynamic Daylighting
Of all my web-based apps, this is the first to come close to my original concept of a deeply interactive and playful tool that addresses all the complexities involved in a particular design and analysis process. This app investigates real-time dynamic daylight analysis within a simple rectangular room based on detailed sky distributions. The room size, windows, external shading devices and work plane height can all be interactively manipulated with the internal daylight distribution updating in real time. You can add any number of windows, external shading devices or site obstructions, and experiment with different surface reflectances and window transmittances.
Schedule Editor
This web app lets you create and edit annual hourly schedules. It features a sophisticated interactive daily profile editor and the ability to assign profiles to any day of the year, including virtual days such as the holiday and design-day types used by EnergyPlus. It can also import and export a range of formats including CSV, DIVA/DaySim, EnergyPlus (IDF/epJSON) and OpenStudio. You can even drag/drop existing EnergyPlus and OpenStudio input files and it will parse out just the schedule information.