Vasari Wind Analysis

Working with Vasari is pretty great. Most things I want to model come pretty easily as long as I forget everything I've learned from the Family Creator in Revit. The similarities are there, but mostly, it's a new world. For those keeping up, I've tried to create some fun while learning some of the finer points of Vasari, so I chose the Planet Express headquarters and ship from one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Futurama.

I've also been toying with rendering

Basically, the modelling in Vasari is the same conceptual massing tool found in Revit, I've just not had much time to dedicate to learning it, so as stated earlier, I spent some time over the break getting a usable model created to test on. I'll get into specific modelling techniques later, but what I want to focus on today is the Wind Analysis function. It's a great way to view your model regardless if it was created in Vasari or not. The same import types are available to you (dwg, dgn, dxf, sat, skp) so you can create anywhere and import the model in. Once imported head over to the 'Climate Analysis' menu under the 'Analyze' tab to get started.

The model will open in a new 'mode' and the interface will change pretty drastically, but not to worry, it's all good. On the left you'll find a slew of new commands and functions to play with (and I recommend doing just that). I wanted to use the wind analysis to create some compelling views of my model to communicate wind speed and direction and how that velocity interacts with my model, I so I used the 'Flow Lines' display under '3D Volumetric' (this WILL eat your CPU up on larger files, you've been warned). I played around with the 'Flow Line Settings' a bit to get what I want, but basically the break down is this:

The 'Boundaries to Flow From' are your wind sources, you can click as many as you want, I chose the front plane. The 'Min' and 'Max' control the height of the source so you can reduce it to just flow over certain parts of your model and the cell inset offsets the source of the wind from that boundary.

'Flow Characteristics' control the actual vectors as they flow over your model. 'Number of Lines' controls the density of samples you run while 'Segments per Line' control the length of each vector. 'Speed of Travel' is obvious and 'Maximum Age' refers to how long a trail hangs around before starting over. 'Arrow Shape' is pretty straight forward so I won't go into here.

After a few iterations, you can get a pretty clear picture of what the wind is doing to my model and the conversation turns in a client meeting to where you shouldn't put your picnic tables and where you should put your wind turbines. Or in my case, how awesome a spaceship looks travelling fast!

Take some time getting familiar with all the bells and whistles and have a great weekend!

PS, I know there is no wind in space, Planet Express Ship is entering our atmosphere :p