[Radiance-general] Radiance tool and Atrium daylight

[Nick Devlin]

Jiangto, 

Welcome to the wonderful confusing world of radiance. 

Firstly, I am a big fan of Ecotect, as it is a great tool for modeling. I
certainly prefer it to Autocad, 3d studio etc. It's development was always
intended for use during early design stages by providing quick iterative
results.

However, I would also suggest that using it with Desktop Radiance will not
only seriously limit the analysis process by limiting access to the newer
Radiance functions, but also potentially compromise the validity of your
results and cloud your understanding of the various Radiance analysis
functions and parameters.

So, if you have access to Linux and the latest Radiance versions, I would go
with that, but use Ecotect to build your models and export the relevant .rad
files. You can also export the analysis girds locations etc for use with
Rtrace directly within Linux version. Finally, you can then re-import the
values to Ecotect for certainly visualization tasks. 

I run Ubuntu Linux on my windows machine through VMware workstation, where
you can set up shared folders to move data between linux and windows. 

I would however strongly recommend that you have a look at Axel's Radiance
tutorials from London Metropolitan University as these are on the money as
they say. They can be found at:
http://www.learn.londonmet.ac.uk/student/resources/notes.shtml.

Good luck..

Nick
Nick Devlin Associates



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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:32:11 +0100 (BST)
From: Jiangtao Du <jiangtao.du at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [Radiance-general] Radiance tool and Atrium daylight
	simulation 
To: radiance-general at radiance-online.org
Message-ID: <20070326213211.80900.qmail at web28114.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi, friends,
   
  I am a post-graduate student in Sheffield University. My project is atrium
daylighting and I want to simulate atrium daylight using Radiance. As a
beginner of this tool, I have many questions:
   
  1. Do you think Ecotech 5.5 with Desktop Radiance control panel (the
newest version ) is the right tool to do my atrium research? I like using it
for its clear GUI, but if it could finish similar work and achieve the same
results as its UNIX/LINUX brother?
   
  2.  I think a lot of complex atrium roofs have to be researched and
constructed in my project, if UNIX/LINUX Radiance is the most suitable tool?
If Linux version is good, could I use the Radiance on Cygwin Environment?
   
  3. Someone has told me that Radiance in Adeline is a cut-version, but I
found some atrium daylight papers which have used this tool (Anca D.
Galasiu, Morad R. Atif from Canada, B. Calcagni, M. Paroncini from Italy).
How about your opinion?
   
  4. Mac Radinace is a new choice , I found some researchers recommended the
Sketchup + Radiance is a good way. Could you compare this with Sketchup (or
Autocad) + Ecotech +Radiance?
   
  Many thanks to your help.
   
  Jiangtao Du
  Mphi/phd student in School of Arch in Sheffield Univ