Sun Study - Plan of path of sun with information

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to create a plan that shows the location of the sun with the sun altitude and sun azimuth for multiple times during specific days of the year. Also it would be great if the day of the year and the time for each sun location could be displayed on this plan. Thanks in advance for any help.
David Rulon
AC 9 Version 9.0.0.8306
MS Window XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2
1.00 GB of Ram

[Rob]

mate, I'm not quite sure what you're after but if you want to create sort of diagrammatic sun positions go to:
Image >> 3D Projection settings >> More Sun...
and fiddle with the Location and Date part. That gives you Azimuth and Altitude of Sun for each particular date/time. I suppose you just need the azimuth for the plan.
If you want to find the angle of sun in the section/elevation window use this formula:

angle=ATN(TAN(Altitude)/COS(Azimuth)), where ATN is the arc tangent function

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help. I was actually trying to create a plan that showed the sun location with the sun altitude and sun azimuth for certain times during specific days of the year. I ended up just doing a screen shot with the both the "3D Settings" window and the "More Sun" window showing on top of the plan for each time and date. It was a bit tedious but it worked. I would love to know if there is an easier way to do this.

[Djordje]

jdrulon wrote:
I was actually trying to create a plan that showed the sun location with the sun altitude and sun azimuth for certain times during specific days of the year.

Did you try using the Sun Study tool and rendering at intervals to separate images?

[Anonymous]

I am not sure what you mean. I was trying to show the location of the sun, in this case where the sun set for 21st of each month because the owner wanted to know where the the sun set in relation to the floor plan of the house. I ended up making a screen shot for each month with the "3D Projection Settings" window and the "More Sun" window shoing on the plan. This worked but it was a bit of work. It seems like some easy means to show the path of the sun on the plan for a chosen day or the location of the sun at sunrise, at noon or at sunset for different days of the year would be a good feature. Perhpas it is already there and I do not know how to do it.

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Sun Study (which produces, err, a shadow study) in 'Image>Create Sun Study' gives you snapshots at whatever interval you set for a given date. But you have to order each Sun Study separately, you can't buy them in bulk like 'give me a snapshot every two hours starting at 8 AM for Dec 21 and repeat with an interval of seven days until Jun 21'. Which would be neat and should go to the wishlist.

You can ask your images as rendered bitmaps or 3D-window-like vector drawings. But you can't ask them to display date-time (and the names of the pictures don't show the date-time also, you get something like 0001.2dl, 0002.2dl, 0003.dl, so you better keep your destination folders tidy).

You could have a GDL object to display the sun altitude and azimuth, which are Global Variables which can be requested by the object. But there is no such thing for date and time for the sun position.

So your screenshot workaround is the only method I think, other than Photoshopping the text for azimuth-altitude-date-time into the rendered snapshot or adding it with the ArchiCAD text tool to the vector snapshot.

[Aussie John]

Ignacio wrote:
You can ask your images as rendered bitmaps or 3D-window-like vector drawings. But you can't ask them to display date-time (and the names of the pictures don't show the date-time also, you get something like 0001.2dl, 0002.2dl, 0003.dl, so you better keep your destination folders tidy).

You could have a GDL object to display the sun altitude and azimuth, which are Global Variables which can be requested by the object. But there is no such thing for date and time for the sun position.

Saving the sun study as a Quicktime movie shows the date and time for each frame.

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Aussie wrote:
Saving the sun study as a Quicktime movie shows the date and time for each frame.

Ahahah!

It would still be neat to be able to get that in the vectorial output, which is what get used for shadow calculations.

[Anonymous]

jdrulon wrote:
Thanks for the help. I was actually trying to create a plan that showed the sun location with the sun altitude and sun azimuth for certain times during specific days of the year. I ended up just doing a screen shot with the both the "3D Settings" window and the "More Sun" window showing on top of the plan for each time and date. It was a bit tedious but it worked. I would love to know if there is an easier way to do this.

Remember doing sun angles & azimuths using just a compass, straightedge, and protractor? Well, I do. Handmade sun studys.

http://www.geomancy.org/orthographic/html/section-1/1-2.html

[Anonymous]

It seems that it could be helpful to both architects and their clients to be able to see where the sun is for a particular time, date and location. Could some one create GDL object (sphere) that would represent the sun and be positioned based upon the time, date and location given as the parameters of the sun. The sun study is great but it only tells you the result (i.e. shadows ) but does not show you where the sun is if you look towards the sun. Is this worth adding to the wish list?