Live Floor Plan Sunshadow Diagram

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Once again i must ask the arduous question regarding sunshadows.

Some background info:

1. In our office when referring to sun shadow or sun study diagrams, we are referring to plans showing the amount of light entering the new development as opposed to showing overshadowing, which we look at more in standard 3D Perspective views.

2. We will usually do this for summer/winter solstice at 9am, 12pm and 3pm and 5pm. Occasionally we may show September or March. When looking at incoming sun over many floor levels it can become quite extensive exercise to produce.

3. I have been looking through tutorials, forum post and answers and AC literature for 3 hours today on company training time, without ever finding a solid answer.

Ok, to the bulk of the question.

I understand how to create sunshadow diagrams using the 3D, Marquee, Copy Shadow Polygon, paste to plan method. Whilst i am happy with this method for its output, it is an exhausting task when having to complete over 20 different plans for 1 residence.

Also to achieve this method i made each floor plates its own colour as suggested, so i could easily find and attach each floors shadows. Interestingly and also a little frustrating, this worked for the first two levels of the BIM but not the third, and i wondered if anyone had any input on that?

Ultimately though, after reading through the links i posted at the bottom, and a subsequent amount of other forum posts that i clicked through, it would appear that "live" shadows would be the easiest and quickest way to achieve the result i am after.

The creation and filtering of a 3DD are fine, but how can i create a view wherein in i am effectively viewing the plan from the top down from almost directly underneath the ceiling, in which case the only light and shadows coming in are cast directly from the AC Helidon.

I just cant waste anymore time on this, any help would be greatly appreciated, and if anyone can offer the solution i would kindly create an in-depth tutorial video discussing this topic and its solutions.

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Archicad Wiki_3D documents

[Anonymous]

OK so I helped Chris with this one last week and just because it's had quite a few views I thought I'd share our solution on it.
This only works in 14 because of shadows in OpenGL too.
So basically what we did was place a slab around the perimeter walls (a single ceiling sheet), then change the top material only to a transparent material (glass).
Then setting the Parallel Projection settings to top view an the camera azimuth to 270º we could get the internal shadows to show.
Then adjusting the time, date, location, project north we could get the desired shadows.
Once all was set and ready to go it was a right click on the generic axonometry in the project map and saved it as it's time of day.
Unfortunately we couldn't do the cool little 3D doc overlay trick but it was still internal shadows.
Hope that helps anyone else trying to get the same internal shadows.

[Anonymous]

I gave it another try again. I neglected to set ONLY the top surface to transparent. Now it works.

Thanks!