Update 2018-10-18 ~ NREL OpenStudio 2.7.0 embeds Ladybug Tools / Spider gbXML Viewer Basic

[theo-armour]

@ladybug-tools/spiders

Screen capture showing slightly hacked Spider gbXML Viewer running inside OpenStudio

Release notes and downloads here:

OpenStudio 2.7.0

It's official! The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), a national laboratory of the United States Department of Energy is embedding Ladybug Tools / Spider gbXML Viewer Basic in the latest release of OpenStudio®. OpenStudio is a 'cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance. OpenStudio is an open source (LGPL) project to facilitate community development, extension, and private sector adoption.'

Spider gbXML Viewer Basic is younger, smaller sibling of the Ladybug Tools / Spider 'Aragog' gbXML Viewer. Its mission is simply to provide a standalone, interactive 3D visualization of gbXML files that may embedded in any program or HTML web page. And it may also become instance where a younger sibling overtakes the elder sibling - because it was developed on a fresh, new, simpler, faster, smarter code base.

The new code base makes it easier to build add-on modules. Several models have already been built with the new code base and the results appear to provide a simpler, faster user experience. As a result, most all current forward-looking software development is being devoted to the new modules.

A surprising and welcome aspect of the OpenStudio inclusion is the ease of which NREL has made it possible to modify and upgrade the embedded HTML file. We Spiders anticipate being able to offer a variety of modules that you will be able to drag and drop into OpenStudio folders and they just run. And we look forward to your thoughts and suggestions as to what should be contained in the default or core module.

We will have lots more to say about all of this, but now it's time to get back to some coding. In the meantime many thanks to @macumber and his team for making all this happen so swiftly and so easily (from our point of view anyway).