You heard right. Somehow our resident simulation hero, Rhys Goldstein, has found a way to approximate acoustic analysis using the same fundamental data structures he used to implement both pathfinding and visibility. Simon Breslav has built the core C++ library into the Space Analysis package and has posted it to the Dynamo Package Manager as version 0.3.0.
Here’s a screenshot of the feature in action:
This graph has two point sources, which can be combined by either union or intersection: for most scenarios I’d imagine it would be more useful to use union, which will aggregate multiple sources… we could use this to assess the distraction caused by audible “buzz” from major pedestrian routes through an office, for instance. That said, I can also imagine wanting to identify areas where multiple sound sources are in conflict (perhaps speakers from “competing” adjacent conference rooms).
Here’s a subsection of the graph – with nodes moved around for readability –…