Project 2 - Visual Programming with Dynamo

Upon completion of Project 1, I had several ideas and issues I wanted to resolve. One issue was the geometry of the louvers. When creating the louvers for Project 1, I encountered errors when trying to get the mass to rotate from parametric drivers. I ultimately had to use a single flat plane in order for the parameter to flex. For Project 2, I sought to resolve this issue to create a more realistic and substantial louver geometry. The error I discovered in the first project was that I incorrectly set up reference lines to form the geometry. Having only set up the references on one side and creating/extruding from that piece caused constraints to not be satisfied. By discovering this, I was able to correctly resolve the issue.

Louver Family from Project 1

Updated Louver Family for Project 2

Louver Families nested in a clear curtain wall grid.

After developing the louver geometry, I wanted to enable the family to rotate based upon sun location through the Dynamo plug-in. During the tutorials, the DatatoFamilies sample gave insight on how to make the rotation work.

I began by setting a Sun Path base in which the wall component can relate and connect to.

After setting up the relation to the sun, I began to connect parameters to the components through Dynamo.

I established the family I wanted to rotate with the ‘Select Family Type’ node. This allowed me to apply changes to all instances of the louver family at once. From that point, I followed a similar path laid out in the DatatoFamilies sample to acquire the location of each louver in relation to the sun.

Start of Dynamo String

After establishing the location of the louvers and flexing the Dynamo string, the component began to rotate correctly, but at a very miniscule scale. The next step was to set up the string to precisely rotate according to the time of day. To do this, I applied an If Condition that translates if the approximate time is earlier than 9 A.M. the louvers will be rotated down 30 degrees. If the time is in-between 9 A.M. and 5 P.M., the louvers would extend with no rotation. If the time is after 5 P.M. the louvers would be rotated back down 30 degrees.

Overall view of the Dynamo String

Before Flexing

After… Success!

Rendered Facade

Future Research and Application

Moving forward, I would like to expand on getting the louvers to rotate to various angles based on hour intervals. This will provide more variety and enhance the efficiency of the shading device. Another task I would like to explore is getting curved louvers to rotate in a similar manner. With the geometry having more complexity, it is a challenge to satisfy the various constraints applied to the geometry.