Visualizing surface normals?

[DaveInCaz]

Is there anyway to turn on visualization of surface normal vectors? (As far as I can tell, there is not...)

Right now when checking data I have been manually looking at the winding order of the vertices for a surface. The viewer is a really good way to do this because it shows the surfaces and axes. But if there were some way of having it display the normal vector itself that would be much quicker and less error prone. (Especially for non-axis aligned surfaces).

I believe you can specify the intended winding order of vertices in an IDF file which would have to be taken into account.

[mostaphaRoudsari]

Hi @DaveInCaz, not the best person to answer this but the option that I know is available is to set the materials to be set by face normal.

Click on settings > materials and then select Normals

[theo-armour]

@DaveInCaz

Developer here.

Looking into this...

[DaveInCaz]

@mostaphaRoudsari thanks for the tip, I'll look for that option & see how well it works.

@theo-armour much appreciated.

[theo-armour]

@DaveInCaz @mostaphaRoudsari

Different releases of the Spider Viewer end up with different features. There are a number of reasons for this. Mostly because new technology arrives faster than new releases can be finished.

Over the years the library I use, Three.js, has implemented normals data in a variety of ways. Some easier than others.

I see that R12 displays normals.

https://www.ladybug.tools/spider/gbxml-viewer/

So does R14: https://www.ladybug.tools/spider/gbxml-viewer/r14/gv-cor-core/gv-cor.html

And R0.17: https://www.ladybug.tools/spider-gbxml-tools/spider-gbxml-viewer/

The unfinished R2020 does not display normal and neither does the even more unfinished Spider 2021.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you need more help.

[DaveInCaz]

@theo-armour I had the impression that the GBXML viewer doesn't load IDF files.. maybe this is incorrect? Last time I looked at it though I didn't see a way to do that. But in any case, its IDF files I have available.

The viewer I have been using which seems to be the latest for IDF is https://www.ladybug.tools/spider-2020/spider-idf-viewer/v-2020-10-09/spider-idf-viewer.html