Overview
What Wrengler answers, how results reach the viewport, and where each study stands today.
Most environmental analysis is a question about rays: does sunlight reach this point, can this observer see that target, how much solar energy lands on this facade? Wrengler answers all three with one ray engine, and shows you the answer where you work.
Wrengler is in preview. There has been no release yet.
The Studies
Each study runs over a named geometry group or an ad-hoc selection, so you analyze exactly the part of the model you care about.
| Study | Question it answers | State |
|---|---|---|
| Sunlight Hours | How many hours of direct sun does each point receive, over a chosen period? | Shipped — command, panel, live heatmap, end to end |
| View / Visibility | Can these observers see these targets? Returns a visible fraction plus sightlines. | Engine verified — Rhino adapter next |
| Solar Radiation | How much solar power reaches each sensor at one instant, in W/m²? | Written, not verified — not released |
| Daylight | — | Planned |
Results Live in the Viewport
A Sunlight Hours study paints a live heatmap directly onto your geometry, and as you change the massing the result updates. No separate report, no export step. That is what makes Wrengler a design tool rather than an audit tool — you see the consequence of a move as you make it. The other studies are being wired to the same loop.
An Account, and What Still Runs Locally
A Wrengler account is required. Opening the plug-in presents a sign-in / sign-up wall, and no study runs without a session — the gate covers the Rhino command line too, not only the panel. Sign in with e-mail and password, or with GitHub (which opens your real browser and returns on its own).
Your model still never leaves your machine. The ray engine is linked into the plug-in and runs on your own CPU or GPU; Wrengler uploads no geometry to analyze it, and the account is a product boundary rather than a compute one.
Two different things need the network, and they fail differently.
| Needs a connection | What happens without one | |
|---|---|---|
| The interface | Every time it opens | The panel is a web app Rhino loads from rhino.wrengler.dev. If that is unreachable, the plug-in shows a short local page saying an internet connection is required — it does not carry a copy of the interface |
| Your session | To sign in, and about every two weeks after | Once signed in, Wrengler keeps working offline for up to 14 days, then asks you to sign in again |
A machine that has never signed in cannot run a study, and there is no air-gapped mode. Earlier builds of Wrengler needed no account; that changed, and there is no flag that restores it.
One Engine Underneath
Every study goes through a single seam with four ray queries — occlusion, visibility, hemisphere gather, and irradiance — so the studies never learn which hardware answered them. The engine picks a backend from what your machine supports and falls back gracefully, so a driver problem never blocks a run.
The reference backend is a brute-force CPU implementation whose results are checked against closed-form physics. Every faster backend is then checked against it, so the same study gives the same answer wherever it runs. See Core Concepts for the backend list.
Where to Next
- Architecture — the layered stack and the bridge into Rhino.
- Core Concepts — sensors, rays, queries, and groups.
- Installation — get the plug-in running in Rhino 8 on Windows.