Sun study

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I am needing to produce a sun study showing the net new shadow thrown on a park by a new building. If anybody knows any procedure better than what I figured and describe below, in any software, please let me know.

The process requires calculating the shadowed area on the park as existing, the shadowed area on the park with the new building included, and subtracting the first value from the second value, for *about 1400 moments in the year* (one shot every 15 minutes for 27 days each representing a week in a half year).

The 54 sun studies part (27 existing, 27 new) gets taken care of by ArchiCAD, I guess exporting as 2D lines. Then there is manual magicwanding or whatever to highlight the area of shadow on the park itself by getting it into a polygon or zone, and checking what that value is. My optimist estimate is that each moment may take between one and two minutes, which makes the job a 24 to 48 man hours job.

I find it hard to believe that every single sun study provided to the city required a week or more from some unfortunate guy, and I hope there must be some better method.

[Anonymous]

Ignacio wrote:
It's the San Francisco Burbinger is thinking of. Luck and temperance.

Does that mean you might be in the area for ACUWest next year? (Of course, I realize that the schedule is not set yet. I assume it would be in the March/April time frame.)

[Anonymous]

Thinking seriously. Make an appointment with the planning board and /or request a copy of a previous project that they have accepted. This is an unusual requirement, otherwise you are quessing what is actually expected. Besides that, do you want the possible liability of the study? Outside consultants perhaps do this several times a year. Thinking outside the box.

[Greg Kmethy]

Aaron wrote:
Some time ago I was shown an Add-On (in the very early days of Add-Ons) that performed shadow studies in ArchiCAD and prepared data to submit data to the (Tokyo?) building authority. Apparently their requirements were quite complex.

That Add-On is comparing the outline of the shadowed area during the day at a given elevation to a curve that is specified by the authorities. It is using an external (non-graphisoft) engine.

[Anonymous]

"Ignacio" wrote:
I am needing to produce a sun study showing the net new shadow thrown on a park by a new building. If anybody knows any procedure better than what I figured and describe below, in any software, please let me know.

I did one once by making the new building transparent red, the existing buildings opaque. The extra shadow showed up reddish. Does this help?

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

HANIEL wrote:

Ignacio wrote:
I did one once by making the new building transparent red, the existing buildings opaque. The extra shadow showed up reddish. Does this help?

That would save a step or two, which multiplied by a zillion shots would be absolutely wonderful (the spreadsheet still needs to show the areas for the total shadows before and after, but with that method the graphic could be produced in a single step, as opposed to overlaying shots from two sun studies which was what I was thinking of).

So that was straight from ArchiCAD? I do need the output to be vectorial for the calculations. (If it was not ArchiCAD then, maybe with AC 9 and the new render engine it can now be --I am getting 9 in a week or two.)

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Burginger wrote:
Thinking seriously. Make an appointment with the planning board and /or request a copy of a previous project that they have accepted. This is an unusual requirement, otherwise you are quessing what is actually expected. Besides that, do you want the possible liability of the study? Outside consultants perhaps do this several times a year. Thinking outside the box.

This is *the required procedure* in SF for any building throwing shadow on a park, and I am using a previous presentation by others as a model. The outside consultant has always done it in ArchiCAD, and it takes his staff like 6+ man-weeks! (he admits they are not super expert AC users, and I would guess/hope we might be able to cut some 5 to 5.5 weeks from the critical path thing).

[Anonymous]

This entire thread has been alphabetical, the problem we are asked to chime in about is graphical. Post some material to get our left brain working.

Mark

[Anonymous]

Ignacio wrote:

HANIEL wrote:

Ignacio wrote:
I did one once by making the new building transparent red, the existing buildings opaque. The extra shadow showed up reddish. Does this help?

...
So that was straight from ArchiCAD? I do need the output to be vectorial for the calculations. (If it was not ArchiCAD then, maybe with AC 9 and the new render engine it can now be --I am getting 9 in a week or two.)

It was from archicad, but I suspect using bitmaps. Maybe vector, with transparency in shadows turned on would work Give it a try.

[Rakela Raul]

http://www.cadimage.co.nz/nzarchicad.asp?link=nzarchicad

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I am not getting color tinted shadows using the Lightworks rendering engine --the sun study seems to just throw 'shadow' fills, even if I make the old buildings in Whitewash and the new building in Glass Bronze. Let me know if it seems that I may be doing something wrong.