ClimateStudio Change Log

2.0.9112.15116

12 December 2024

Enhancements

• Rhino 8 compatible! (with dark mode support)
• New daylighting engine:
  • Multiversal ray tracer (MVRT) supports dynamic scene objects, including operable shades, deciduous trees, and seasonal snow cover.
  • Traces interactions between dynamic elements (3/5-phase methods cannot do this).
  • Multi-CPU.
  • Built on Radiance 5.4.
  • Implemented in all annual lighting workflows (daylight, glare, radiation maps).
• Dynamic materials, assets, and controls:
  • Dynamic leaf materials, which observe deciduous size and color schedules based on latitude.
  • Dynamic snow material, which observes seasonal alpha-channel schedule based on temperature.
  • Generic "scheduled" material, whose availability can be set via user-defined schedules.
  • Tree assets via the Tree Geometries Panel, which contains a (small) library of deciduous tree blocks for placing in the Rhino model. The blocks include detailed leaf geometries, which may increase simulation times significantly.
  • Dynamic shades and glazings have been relocated! They are now available in the layer material editor, under the following categories:
    • Exterior Glass (with Dynamic Shade (optional))
    • Exterior Glass (Electrochromic)
  • Expanded set of fabric-shade materials, imported from LBNL's Complex Glazing Database (CGDB). Table includes glare control classifications per EN 17037.
  • Expanded set of shading controls, including automated and (non-LM83) manual systems. Parameters include DNE threshold, permissible sun penetration depth (on a room-by-room basis), and lag time before shades are re-opened.
  • Dynamic shades can now be modeled independently of glazing surfaces. This is useful when shading geometry is something other than an inset/offset of the surfaces on the glass layer. (To do this, place the shading surfaces on a separate Rhino layer, and assign it an Exterior Glass (with Dynamic Shade) system in which the glazing material is No Glass.)
  • Dynamic windows/shades inside block definitions are now supported.
• Radiation maps:
  • Dynamic foliage and snow cover (see above).
  • Custom date/time range inputs.
  • Option to save hourly sensor data. When enabled, daily and hourly irradiance plots are available in the results panel.
• Annual glare:
  • Glare evaluation now includes operable shades (and dynamic foliage / snow cover). Shade schedules are computed as in the daylight workflow, per LM-83 or other workplane-sensor-based controls.
  • Renders launched from annual-glare temporal maps now show the shade positions or glazing tints as scheduled for the time step.
• Renderings:
  • Logarithmic scale for falsecolor renderings.
  • Ev/DGP metrics for non-rotating angular fisheyes.
  • Pixel (sub)sampling controls.
  • Shirley-Chiu projection cameras.
  • "Human visual response" tone mapping for renderings, using pcond -h. This option is slower to compute that auto/manual exposures, so performance may suffer if it's enabled while the rendering progresses.
• Electric lighting:
  • Faster simulations of scenes with luminaires thanks to improved brightdata lookup in Radiance. Results match the classical approach (using source.cal / brightdata modifier) but reduce ray tracing times by 2x or more. This option can be disabled in the simulation settings dialog.
  • New luminaire product editor, including:
    • Controls for changing fixture shape and size.
    • Simple housing geometry.
    • Emission color specification using measured SPDs provided by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The SPDs are also available in the post-render luminaire editor.
    • Improved handling of older IES file formats.
    • Support for luminaires nested inside other blocks.
    • Automatic culling of unnecessary luminous faces.
• View analysis:
  • Adjustable angular resolution setting.
  • Improved ground distance assumption when ground surfaces are missing (based on Z=0 or model lower bound).
  • Improved calculation for LEED Quality Views, including:
    • A median outside distance test (by solid angle) for satisfying the objects > 25' criterion. This avoids the pitfalls of nearest / farthest object tests, which risk relying on perceptually insignificant view components.
    • Enforcement of 40% minimum VLT for vision glass.
• Thermal analysis:
  • Updated to EnergyPlus version 23.1.
  • HVAC systems! Including:
    • VAV
    • VRF with Dedicated Outdoor Air (DOAS)
    • FCU with DOAS
    • Each architecture allows (limited) customization, including several plant options, boilers, chillers, and heat pumps for air-based and hydronic systems
  • Parametric window generation in Rhino. This feature adds windows to all exterior walls by default, with window-to-wall ratio settable by zone and cardinal orientation. Auto-generated windows can be overridden by inputting surfaces manually.
  • Automatic ground-boundary generation.
  • Energy Sources and Emission Factors tab, for managing LCA and cost data for fuel types.
  • Library overhaul:
    • Separate construction and space-use templates.
    • Space-use library cleanup, including more intuitive category names.
    • Easier-to-use zone-settings UI.
    • Zone coloring by space use or system.
  • Improvements to thermal model table:
    • Space-use, construction, and system settings are now shown in table columns.
    • These settings may be edited independently by clicking on the corresponding icon. This improves multi-select editing, as you may now change only the space-use setting (for example) across multiple zones.
  • Results panel now includes toggle for switching between absolute and normalized metrics.
  • Improved energy graphs, including:
    • Building-level load duration graphs.
    • Outdoor humidity and DBT for weekly zone graphs.
    • CSV export.
    • Improved palette, including a different color for each fuel type.
• Grasshopper:
  • Simulation components upgraded to 2.0 engine.
  • DynamicWindowLayer component replaces old Window constructor for daylight models.
  • New shading control component for LM-83, automated, and manual systems.
  • New window-group preview component, showing open-% statistics (as in Rhino).
  • New components for getting, constructing, and placing luminaire products.
  • Updated example files.
  • Sensor grids may now be generated from points/vectors rather than surfaces. To use this option, input sensors from the Construct CS Sensor component into the (hidden) sensor override of the SensorGrid or AnalysisSurface constructor. Note that surface-based falsecolor previews will not be available for grids generated in this fashion (see override parameter for details).
  • Users may now create custom falsecolor palettes for Rhino by baking from Grasshopper. To add a falsecolor, right-click the Construct CS Falsecolor component and select "Add falsecolor to library." To remove, use the "-" buttons in Rhino's edit-falsecolor dialog.
  • Improved json parsing on thermal "set" components to accept partial definitions for selective overrides.
  • Added keyval component to make it easier to build parametric settings jsons in Grasshopper.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Updated Kalwall product library.
  • Added Saint Gobain products to glazing library.
  • Added context buildings to example files.
  • Results table now checks relative file paths.
  • Added VLT / VLR columns to the layer materials panel (must meet a minimum width to appear).
  • Improved legibility of sensor value labels situated above dark falsecolors.
  • Added dew point parameterization to gendaylit skies (optional).
  • Disabled the (undocumented, per Ineichen?) ground brightness adjustment in gendaylit. Point-in-time gendaylit skies now produce Lambertian ground brightness values, matching gensky and gendaymtx. Please note that you should always model a physical ground surface, without which none of the models correctly accounts for shadows.
  • Improved daylight-result display performance (esp. when scrubbing through timesteps).
  • Room tags and window tags are now moveable!
  • Added continuous daylight autonomy (cDA) metric to Custom daylight runs. Accessible via Grasshopper, or CSV export in Rhino.

Bug Fixes

• Updated onebuilding.org URLs to fix intermittent weather-file download failures.
• Fixed glare position indices below line of sight per Iwata model.
• Fixed RGBE formatting bug in HDR exports.
• Fixed incorrect gas layer thicknesses in glazing library.
• Results table was not clearing consistently when switching Rhino files. This has been fixed.
• Layers with emissive materials were affecting LEED-Option-2 and daylight-factor-based simulations. They are now (properly) ignored.
• Grid preview and data extraction components in Grasshopper were omitting EN17037 and other standards-specific metrics. This has been fixed.
• Fixed muted appearance of falsecolors when "Advanced GPU lighting" is enabled in the Rhino viewport.
• Fixed BREEAM credits for Retail buildings (points are now awarded to sales areas and other occupied areas independently).
• Grasshopper grid preview component was inconsistently refreshing the display pipeline in Rhino 7/8. This has been fixed.
• Fixed all-black falsecolor results in viewport caused by excessively large bitmap textures. Textures are now downsampled or displayed as sensor disks as needed.
• Fixed missing room-tag data for "live" results (those not yet loaded from disk file).
• Fixed glitchy results display performance when using clipping planes in rendered display modes.

1.9.8389.22036

3 November 2023

Enhancements

• Installation of the CS Exporter into Revit 2024 on install.

1.9.8389.22035

21 December 2022

Enhancements

• Render window Copy-to-Clipboard function.
• Render window remembers previous export directory. Default directory is relative to result/Rhino file (rather than Desktop).
• Added max luminous intensity (candela) to IES file editor.
• Added total luminous output (lumens) to IES file editor. This value comes directly from the file's photometric distribution, and is a more accurate measure of emitted flux than the rated lumen value sometimes listed in the file header.
• Added field to visualize natural ventilation control schedules.
• Improvements to design option handling in Revit export.
• Addional SubCategory option for identifying glass in Revit export.
• Blinds schedule annotations are now hideable in viewport.

Bug Fixes

• Linked models are now correctly placed in Revit export.
• Fixed North rotation for Utah colored skies.
• Fixed luminaire CCT color conversion issues on foreign-language copies of Windows.
• Fixed aiming issues for mirrored luminaire instances, and implemented checks to prevent new mirror operations (which are neither supported by Radiance, nor physically possible for non-symmetric distributions).
• Fixed new-version download notification appearing when it shouldn't (specifically, when a release candidate is available but user has opted for full service releases only).
• Fixed blank rendering issue for Windows user accounts with spaces in name.
• Fixed unresponsive Grasshopper simulation progress bar when Rhino plug-in isn't loaded.
• Fixed spatial thermal comfort error with concave zones.
• Fixed license compatibility running alongside other RLM softwares.
• Fixed run failure for Grasshopper daylight models missing sky input.
• Fixed sensor-area list length in Deconstruct SensorGrid component in Grasshopper.
• Fixed radiation map output read error in Grasshopper (rare).

1.8.8244.25334

28 July 2022

Enhancements

• Overhaul of Radiance Render workflow, including:
  • AI denoising (using Intel OIDN)
  • Illuminance renders (in lux or fc)
  • In-window navigation and camera previews
  • Named and standard Rhino views
  • Automatic re-use of scene files when changing only the camera (for faster render launch)
• Luminaire groups with post-process dimming and color adjustment.
• Clickable window-group blinds-use statistics in Rhino viewport.
• Expanded climate.onebuilding.org weather-file database.
• Added Heat Index plot to Site Analysis graphs.
• Added metric/imperial unit-switch buttons to render, illuminance, and radiation map UIs.
• Indirect passes/samples can now be disabled completely in annual daylight simulations (in Rhino), and radiation maps (in Grasshopper). Potentially useful for exporting direct-only component.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed error message when selecting locally-saved weather file.
• Fixed identification of "glass" in non-English Revit versions.
• Fixed timeout for import of complex Revit geometries.
• Wind rose North bin fix.
• Radiation map results weren't responding to low-temperature-bin setting. This has been fixed.

1.7.8145.24039

20 April 2022

Enhancements

• Revit-to-Rhino workflow for daylight models! Automates several previously-cumbersome aspects of daylight-model exchange, including filtering categories, generating analysis surfaces, and converting glazing solids to single surfaces. See documentation for details.
• Global IP/SI unit switching.
• Improved handling of GPU-based acceleration, including GUI for device selection (see Daylight, Glare, or Render simulation settings, or the "CSAccelerationDevice" command).
• Added North offset to Grasshopper energy models.
• Added precipitation data (when available) to weather graphs.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed broken DOE weather file download links.
• Fixed compatibility issue with weather files containing decimal irradiance values.
• Incorporated Radiance fix for BSDFs with non-reciprocal transmission matrices. (Thanks to Greg Ward.)
• Fixed culture-dependence for Solatube files in Grasshopper.
• GHI input for Perez skies in Grasshopper wasn't implemented. This has been fixed.

1.6.8014.23580

10 December 2021

Enhancements

• Added Grasshopper component for generating results comparison graphs.
• Added direction override for sensor grids (useful for measuring horizontal illuminance in vertical section, for example).
• Added room-tag support for non-horizontal analysis surfaces.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed instability / poor display performance of radiation maps with numerous analysis surfaces.
• Fixed slow Rhino document (auto)saving.
• Fixed falsecolor preview issues in Rhino page layouts.
• Fixed Grasshopper preview issues in Arctic display mode.

1.5.7955.28487

12 October 2021

Enhancements

• Added Energy results comparison tool for graphing/documenting EUI and other performance indices across design variants.
• Added European daylighting standard (EN 17037:2018) to Daylight Availability and View workflows, for calculating daylight provision and views out, respectively.
• Added room tags to viewport display.
• Added Utah colored sky model for point-in-time illuminance calcs and renderings.
• Added UTCI filter to wind rose and hourly heatmap.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed dead pixels in 360-degree rotating fisheye renders.
• Fixed error thrown by custom materials in point-in-time illuminance workflow.
• Fixed sun path display mode issues during first use after installation.
• UI stability improvements.

1.4.7920.28915

7 September 2021

Enhancements

• Added View Analysis workflow to Rhino and Grasshopper, which calculates LEED v4 Quality Views (with one-click PDF report) as well as view factors for specific features / model-layers.
• Updated / expanded Solatube product library.
• Revamped UI for energy models, including:
  • Nested object table showing zone / face / window hierarchies.
  • Improved viewport preview and object visibility controls.
  • Easier-to-use settings forms with icons and input validity checks.
  • More flexible boundary object and ground surface modeling.
  • UI for FEM ground contact model (KIVA).
• Introduced (optional) notifications for ClimateStudio service release candidates.
• Various backend stability improvements.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed scaling issues in thermal model when switching doc units.
• Fixed large octree sizes for Grasshopper models with dynamic windows.

1.3.7871.19685

20 July 2021

Bug Fixes

• Fixed CS Workflows panel and sluggish UI on Windows machines with non-US DateTime formats.

1.3.7860.12879

9 July 2021

Enhancements

• Added weather search feature that pulls from set of ~30,000 DOE and onebuilding.org weather files.
• Added customizable weather data visualizations with PNG/PDF export, including:
  • Wind rose (2D & 3D).
  • Psychrometric chart.
  • Diurnal averages (temperature & solar radiation).
  • Hourly weather data maps, including UTCI with/without sun and wind protection.
  • 2D sun path diagram.
  • Climate summary table, including climate zone classification and heating/cooling design conditions.
• Added hourly radiation analysis to Grasshopper.
• Added support for arbitrary window shapes in Energy model.
• Added support for BSDF .rad files (useful for manually setting up vector, which can't be specified with XML file alone).
• Added links to online documentation.
• Added pop-out feature that converts Rhino panels to floating windows.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed handling of Radiance mixture functions in direct calculation of annual daylight/glare runs.
• Fixed daylight factor legend display in Rhino 7 SR7.

1.2.7796.19900

6 May 2021

Enhancements

• Added tubular daylighting devices to daylight simulations. The devices are implemented using a modified version of Radiance 5.3 that allows for split-surface BSDFs.
• Added a library of Solatube devices using measured BSDF data.
• Added customizable Radiance parameters to Grasshopper simulation components.

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug importing custom specular plastic materials.
• Fixed camera orientation issues with active/saved Rhino views.

1.1.7723.36390

22 February 2021

Enhancements

• Added KIVA foundation model.
• Improved acceleration library compatibility with AMD graphics cards.
• Added CPU-only acceleration mode as fallback for users with incompatible GPUs (available via the "CS_AccelerationLib" command after starting Rhino).

Bug fixes

• Grasshopper daylight simulations weren't running on foreign-language Windows machines. This has been fixed.

1.1.7718.17442

17 February 2021

Enhancements

• Added (day)lighting components for Grasshopper.
• Added support for EnergyPlus v9.4 and pixelcounter for shading calculations.
• Improved surface division for radiation maps (surface and box mapping options available).
• Added spatial thermal comfort workflow in Grasshopper.
• Added automatic scaling of results to Rhino document UnitSystem.
• Updated AIA reporting to latest API.

Bug fixes

• Fixed laggy display during annual daylight runs in Rhino 7.
• Fixed North-arrow flicker in rendered display modes.
• Fixed sensor capture due to curved radiation surfaces.

1.0.7624.21819

15 November 2020

Enhancements

• Added clipping planes and auto exposure to render workflow.

Bug fixes

• Fixed two bugs introduced in Oct 25 update:
  • User custom Radiance material directories not saving.
  • Illuminance result panel not displaying month correctly.

1.0.7612.11402

3 November 2020

Enhancements

• Added support for blinds in block instances (e.g. when linking external files).

Bug fixes

• Fixed insufficient memory error caused by Radiance files > 2GB.

1.0.7603.21481

25 October 2020

Enhancements

• Added multi core Radiance rendering.
• Added equirectangular projection lens.
• Added ~700 new measured lighting materials.
• Added BSDF XML import for dynamic blinds.
• Model objects preview has been added to CS Energy for Rhino.
• Green roof model has been added to CS Energy for Grasshopper.
• Added separate construction fields for ground slabs and walls.
• A series of ClimateStudio deconstruct components have been added to Grasshopper.

Bug fixes

• Null reference problem with embodied carbon aggregation has been fixed.
• Preview pipeline bugs in CS Energy for Grasshopper have been fixed.

1.0.7570.22582

22 September 2020

Enhancements

• Added schedule editor to daylight workflows.

Bug fixes

• Fixed hourly illuminance CSV export failure for annual glare runs.
• Texfunc modifiers weren't compatible with direct pass. This has been fixed.
• SIA occupancy schedules had inverted weekend/weekday patterns. This has been fixed.

1.0.7559.31782

11 September 2020

Enhancements

• Added direct, indirect, and outdoor-temperature bins to radiation map results.
• Added unit-system options via the "CSSettings" command. Affects only radiation-map and point-in-time-illuminance results at present.
• Incorporated USGBC comments into LEED PDF report. Note that the report has now been approved as a standalone submission for the LEED daylight credit. A separate table/spreadsheet is not required.

Bug fixes

• Shadows in sun path tool weren't responding to North offset. This has been fixed.

1.0.7549.17481

1 September 2020

Bug fixes

• Fixed stacked bar graph and legend alignment issues.
• Fixed crash associated with monthly output selection for Energy runs.
• Custom BSDF materials were failing on direct pass. This has been fixed.

1.0.7538.26732

21 August 2020

Enhancements

• Added annual and day schedule editors to CS Energy workflow
• Multiple enhancements to CS Energy Grasshopper components:
  • Energy model viewport preview
  • New schedule editing component
  • New window and zone settings components
  • New glazing pane and assembly components
  • New import component for WINDOW7 glazing descriptions

Bug fixes

• Fixed annual glare viewport display menu crash.

1.0.7530.18178

13 August 2020

Enhancements

• Added hover values and Y-axis scaling to radiation map graph.
• Added BYR gradient and back-face falsecoloring option to radiation map display.

1.0.7522.32047

5 August 2020

Enhancements

• Added (optional) floor-by-floor summaries to LEED report. Applies only to multi-level buildings.

Bug fixes

• Fixed floorplan misalignments in LEED report.
• Fixed "OpenCL ... InvalidValue" error caused by not enough rays hitting a blind.
• Annual direct calc wasn't handling custom BRTDfunc materials correctly. This has been fixed.

1.0.7515.23089

29 July 2020

Bug fixes

• Interface and PDF report were showing different total ASE values. This has been fixed. Please note: the inconsistency occurred when some (but not all) ASE totals discounted rooms below 250 sq.ft. The software now always presents the total ASE for all rooms in the model.

1.0.7511.26152

25 July 2020

Bug fixes

• Sun path shadows were not displaying properly when certain versions of the V-Ray plugin were installed. This has been fixed.
• In Daylight Availability runs with multiple rooms, blinds schedules could be incorrect if one or more spaces never received direct sunlight. This has been fixed.
• Some NVIDIA graphics cards were returning "GPU device not compatible" errors. A second GPU-acceleration library has been added to ClimateStudio as a potential fix. CS will now fall back on the second library if the first fails.

1.0.7503.15789

17 July 2020

Enhancements

• Added Radiation Map workflow.
• Implemented sensor inset control for occupied spaces.
• Meshes, multi-face and non-planar breps can now be used to create sensor grids. (Useful for measuring illuminance on arbitrary surfaces.)
• Added settable sDA time % threshold to Daylight Availability workflow. (Custom standard. Useful for WELL's sDA_200/40% target.)
• Added favorites to lighting-materials browser.
• Added median daylight factor values to Daylight Factor results table.
• Added sensor-data visualization to Daylight Availability results.
• Added time-scrubbing visualization to Annual Glare results.
• Added reload button for custom libs in material browser. (Useful if editing material directories while Rhino is open.)

Bug fixes

• Custom daylight availability runs were not observing user lux target when calculating sDA. This has been fixed.
• Palette changes weren't showing up in timestep legends. This has been fixed.
• EPW file browser would crash if file's directory had been deleted. This has been fixed.
• In Annual Glare runs with multiple rooms, sensor-indexing errors could occur if one or more spaces never received direct sunlight. This has been fixed.
• Fixed vwrays rendering error on non-English Windows installations.

1.0.7467.39817

12 June 2020

Enhancements

• Added export for charts (as high res images).
• Blinds chart now shows 8760 map when single group selected.
• Made falsecolors editable (again)
  • New gradient options (turbo, viridis, plasma)
  • Out-of-bounds colors and stepping
  • Palette editing (reflected in both grids and charts)

Bug fixes

• Analysis grid lux targets weren't remembered on reopening Rhino doc. This has been fixed.
• UDI legend wasn't reflecting lux target changes. This has been fixed.
• Fixed checkbox selection issues in Energy results panel.
• ASE timestep visualization was showing total (rather than direct-only). This has been fixed.

1.0.7450.16093

25 May 2020

Bug fixes

• Fixed geometry scaling issue caused by Energy runs in non-meter units.

1.0.7447.18611

22 May 2020

Bug fixes

• Fixed dialog icons to be compatible with upcoming Rhino service release (SR26).
• Issued corrections for DST schedules.
• Fixed multiple issues with occupied-areas tables, including search field crashes and tags not saving properly for results areas.

1.0.7433.25214

8 May 2020

Enhancements

• New version detection.
• Additional daylight availability workflows:
  • LEEDv4 Option 2
  • Daylight Factor
  • BREEAM UK & International
• Increased sensor capacity for daylight availability runs (>100k sensors okay).
• Reduced file sizes & faster write times for annual illuminance data.

Bug fixes

• Fixed black border on render bitmap exports.
• Copy/pasting sensor grids between files was bringing results files with them. This has been fixed.
• ashik2 materials weren't working. This has been fixed.

1.0.7406.19080

10 April 2020

Enhancements

• Custom Daylight Availability workflow with UDI results and adjustable lux targets.
• Separation of LEED v4.0 vs. 4.1 Daylight Credit requirements.
• Automated PDF reports for LEED v4.0 and 4.1 Daylight Credit.
• CSV data export for all sensor based workflows.
• Run Info dialog for all sensor based workflows (containing record of simulation inputs).
• Improved viewport display controls, including global hide/show toggles and "disk" style option for sensor areas.
• New Grasshopper zone and window settings components with full API reflection, for parameterizing energy model inputs.

1.0.7380.36641

17 March 2020

Enhancements

• Added AIA DDX reporting
• Added EUI, carbon and cost metrics
• Added AIA Baseline
• New Grasshopper workflow templates for energy modeling
• Airflow-Network visualizations
• Updated graphics for CS energy results