Finding out Shadow Surface area?

[Anonymous]

Hi, I am an Architect working in Norway on a number of housing projects and I often times need to do Sun/shadow analysis. What I mean by that is the following:

Select 2 dates for shadow projection (these dates would typically be June 21. and March 23.) After I have created a view/worksheet with the appropriate date and shadow I usually create a Fill with area text (showing it's m2) to cover the shadow that falls on my building plot (To see how much sun VS shadow there is on the particular dates on the plot).

What I was wondering about was if any of you have a better workflow, because with this process the Fill needs to be adjusted manually every time the building changes. So what I am essentially asking (I think ) is if any of you know of a way to link shadows that fall on a certain plot/area/terrain to a scheduling table. (Or something similar that takes place automatically)

i've been trying to figure out a way to do this (And it would save a lot of time) but haven't.

P.S Sorry if I posted this on the wrong forum

[Christophe Fortineau]

Hello,

The best way is the way you have to begin all of your project :
1 - define GPS coordination about your origin
2 - define the level from the see about your 0.00 project
3 by B - define your north

You can find all these parameters here :

You have put a well know point of your project on your project origin to be sure you will be able to ask its GPS coordination or to be able to find it by google map

Finaly you can click on "4" to se your project place into google map (very usefull)

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for the response Cristophe.

I may not have explained properly but I already have the correct shadows. The thing I am wondering about is:

Is it possible to "Extract" shadows and connect them to a schedule.

Lets say I have a 3 storey building that is casting a shadow on the building plot/property where it stands, is there a way to automatically calculate how many square meters of shadow the building is casting on the plot/property? So that when I add another storey, the shadow calculation will update?

[Christophe Fortineau]

PeturGretarsson wrote:
Is it possible to "Extract" shadows and connect them to a schedule.

I am not sure but you can try with a "3D document" to select shadows and them trying to give it an ID or something to call it into a schedule... I've never tried

[Anonymous]

Yeah I think I will try something like that Thanks for responding.

[Professor Pickle]

Make sure that your projection is parallel and you're looking down in plan on your shadows. Let us know how it went for you.

By the way, I had to do quite a bit of this sort of analysis (baseline vs proposed) in Revit and the quickest way to do it was to trace the shadows out using a filled region. It sounds silly to have to do it by hand but that's how it is. It wasn't too hard anyway and it was good enough for resource consents. There was also the advantage that you can use different colour lines and fills to convey the shading area changes.

[Anonymous]

any method to calculate the area of shadows?

[Barry Kelly]

Aya wrote:
any method to calculate the area of shadows?

There is no automatic way that I know of.
The best I can suggest is to open a 3D axonometric view with the Vectorial (Basic) engine.
Turn the shadows on and make sure you have a true top down view.
Place a 2D marquee around the shadows you want and then COPY.
A dialogue will appear and you can choose to copy just the shadows.


Now you can go back to your floor plan and PASTE these shadows to their original location.

Select all of the shadows (fills) and give them an ID and you can even place them in a special 'Shadow" layer if you want.
Now you can schedule these fills based on the ID as your selection criteria.


It is not live so if your model changes you have to repeat the whole process (make sure you delete the old shadow fills).


Barry.