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Eddy3D is a Grasshopper plugin for Rhino 8 for urban microclimate and airflow simulation. Everything now ships in a single Eddy3D package that bundles several modules:

Eddy3D Setup Esinti Select Template
Setup
STL Exporter Safety Toggle Settle Data
Utilities
Atmospheric Boundary Layer Download Weather Manual Inflow Profile Morph Settings Morph Weather Uniform Flow Wind Compass Wind Rose Cluster Cell Size Cylinder Domain Mesh Settings Brep Grid Points Ground Roughness Land Cover Roughness Pollutant Source Tree Watertight Custom Function Object Load Wind Case Outdoor Case Refinement Region Run Settings Live Residuals Meshing Progress Plot Residuals Run Write Run Scripts Airflow Network Cp Flow Rates Pedestrian Wind Comfort Scalar Field Viewer Vector Field Viewer Velocity Amplification Factors VAF Analysis Period Calendar Deconstruct Wind Hour of Year Translate Date To Hours Wind Legend
Outdoor
Advanced Terrain Mesh Gmsh Mesh Weather Building Material Building Mesh Settings Terrain Mesh Settings Terrain Surface Material Vegetation Mesh Settings Vegetation Properties Air Region Building Region Terrain Region Vegetation Region Box Domain Simulation Mesh Settings Simulation Settings Timing Parameters ViewFactors Outdoor+ Case CheckMesh Check Geometry Parse Case Logs Deconstruct Region Deconstruct Weather Relative Humidity
Outdoor+
Facade Wind Pressure Occupant CO2 Window Air Exchange Indoor Inlet Indoor Outlet Indoor Wall Manikin CO2 Emitter Heat Source Indoor Sink Momentum Source Viral Emitter Indoor Case Indoor Species Case CO2 Air Quality Sleep Comfort Two-Node Comfort
Indoor
Canopy Facade Grid Sun Path Sun Vectors Shadow Solar Irradiation Sun Hours Sun Stats Sunlight Compliance
Sun Shadow
MRT Settings SurfaceTemp Material Surface Settings Tree Settings Vegetation Settings Deconstruct SurfaceTemp Sky Exposure SurfaceTemp FFT MRT Sensors MRT Surface MRT MRT Solve MRT View Factors SurfaceTemp EnergyPlus Deconstruct MRT Deconstruct VF Model Fisheye View
MRT
Thermal Comfort Deconstruct UTCI UTCI Simulation Comfort Hours Thermal Comfort Legend
Comfort
Deconstruct Case Create Mesh Cull Ground Mesh Read Cells Face Warnings Read checkMesh Probe Streamlines Create OBJ Export to Visualizer Open In ParaView Study Report
Post
FluidX3D Run FluidX3D Run Settings LBM Run LBM Run Settings FluidX3D Live View LBM Field
LBM
ML Model GAN Predict Wind Predictor Wind Comfort Predictor ML Dataset Curator Dataset Reader Interpolate UMag MRT Dataset Curator
ML

  • Eddy3D Outdoor

    Decoupled microclimate simulations, via wind and mean radiant temperature simulations. Driven by OpenFOAM and Radiance.

    Outdoor

  • Eddy3D Outdoor+

    Fully coupled microclimate simulations, including wind, radiation, heat, and moisture transfer, driven by urbanMicroclimateFoam by ETH Zurich Building Physics.

    Outdoor+

  • Eddy3D Indoor

    Modeling airflow, moisture content, and passive scalars in indoor spaces.

    Indoor

Installation

Plugin

Install Eddy3D via the Rhino Package Manager (yak) on either platform — run PackageManager in Rhino and search for Eddy3D.

Simulation Engines (Windows / Mac)

Choose a simulation engine (one of the following):

  • Docker or Podman: Download Docker Desktop or download Podman Desktop (Recommended cross-platform — either engine pulls the same pre-configured OpenFOAM 12 image automatically; Auto-detect prefers Podman and falls back to Docker)
    • Docker — larger ecosystem, most familiar tooling; Docker Desktop needs a paid subscription for larger companies and runs containers through a privileged background daemon.
    • Podman — free, open-source, no licensing restrictions; daemonless and rootless by default, which keeps the attack surface smaller on shared or locked-down machines.
  • BlueCFD-Core 2024 (Windows Only): Download blueCFD-Core. Install into a folder without spaces in the name (e.g. C:\blueCFD-Core\2024) — a location like C:\Program Files\... breaks the OpenFOAM toolchain and the UMF solver can never be built or found.
  • WSL (Windows Only): WSL Installation guide for Windows (Requires urbanMicroclimateFoam to be installed manually)

The MRT component uses Radiance. The Install Engines component downloads and installs it automatically (Windows & Mac, release rad6R0P2) under the per-user Eddy3D folder — no manual install needed.

Anonymous Usage Analytics

Eddy3D is free for all users. To keep it that way, the plugin collects anonymous usage statistics: which components are used, which simulation engine runs, the Rhino and plugin versions, a salted one-way hash of the machine name (not reversible to any person), and the network organization (e.g. a university name). These numbers demonstrate real-world usage to research funders and guide development priorities. No geometry, file names, project content, or personal data are ever sent.

Requirements

Module Overview Core engine Package Rhino (ver) OS support OpenFOAM (ver) Radiance (ver)
Outdoor Decoupled wind + mean radiant temp OpenFOAM; Radiance Eddy3D 8.27 Windows / Mac 12 (Foundation) Auto (rad6R0P2)
Outdoor+ Fully coupled (wind, radiation, heat, moisture) OpenFOAM Eddy3D 8.27 Windows / Mac 12 (Foundation) —
Indoor Airflow, moisture, passive scalars (indoor) OpenFOAM Eddy3D 8.27 Windows / Mac 12 (Foundation) -

Downloads

Install Eddy3D from the Rhino Package Manager (run PackageManager in Rhino 8 and search for Eddy3D). For the current version and release notes, see the Eddy3D download page.

Previous Versions

View the required Rhino 8.27 build details (8.27.26019.16022, en-us).

One package

All modules — Outdoor, Outdoor+, Indoor, MRT, and FluidX3D — now ship in the single Eddy3D package on the Rhino Package Manager (yak). The former separate UMCF package (Outdoor+) has been retired.

Getting Started

Start from a template

Eddy3D ships with starter templates for every module. Right-click the Template component in Grasshopper to browse and load one, then follow the numbered markers through the canvas.

Starter template selection dialog

Modules

Outdoor — Wind & MRT

Decoupled microclimate simulations via wind (OpenFOAM) and mean radiant temperature (Radiance).

Parallel computation

There is currently an issue with Microsoft’s and BlueCFD’s MPI dll which is why a run with multiple CPUs might fail. You need both dlls to be the same file, see the CFD Online instructions for matching MPI DLL files to ensure that both DLLs are the same file.

Simple workflows

We value efficient workflows! See below for a one-directional urban CFD setup.

Example of a one-directional urban CFD setup canvas

Video walkthroughs are on the Video Tutorials page.

Outdoor+ — Coupled microclimate

urbanMicroclimateFoam simulation preview

Outdoor+ is the fully coupled microclimate module of the Eddy3D plugin, built on the open-source urbanMicroclimateFoam (UMCF) solver for OpenFOAM.

Key Features

🌊 CFD - Solves turbulent, convective airflow

  • Handles heat and moisture transport in the air subdomain

🏗️ HAM - Manages absorption and transport

  • Controls storage of heat and moisture in porous building materials

☀️ RAD - Calculates net longwave and shortwave radiative heat fluxes

  • Uses view factor approach

🌳 VEG - Solves heat balance for urban trees

  • Handles green surfaces

Analysis & Visualization showing wind patterns

Analysis & Visualization showing temperature and humidity distributions

Acknowledgments

Outdoor+ is based on the urbanMicroclimateFoam (UMF) open-source solver based on OpenFOAM, developed by the Chair of Building Physics at ETH Zürich the Canada Research Chair Tier I in Multiscale Building Physics at Université de Sherbrooke, Canada.

ETH Zurich logo

This project is partially funded by Perkins&Will Research. Their support has been instrumental in advancing this tool.

Perkins&Will logo

This project originated from the VIP - Surrogate Models for Urban Regeneration during Fall 2024. Visit the VIP - Surrogate Models for Urban Regeneration documentation for more details and view the final presentation.

Indoor — Airflow

Modeling airflow, moisture content, and passive scalars in indoor spaces.

See the Video Tutorials page for the Indoor Wind & COVID-19 walkthrough.