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.
