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shadows on adjoining properties elevation

Sinisa Lazarevic
Contributor
It would be great to be able to have shadow casted onto elevation of object taking into account object behind the section line. Council's here require shadow diagrams showing elevation of adjoining property and shadow casted by our proposal onto it.
23 REPLIES 23
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Now you need to draw a Marquee around your generated 3D and press CTRL+C to copy to the Clipboard. This is when the Copy Dialog comes up which lets you set exactly how you want to copy those lines and fills.
Select the options you see in the attached image. The most important ones are "Scaled Drawing", and "Overlapping Polygons". The Overlapping Polygons options will copy all Shadow polygons generated by the program in 3D to the clipboard.
SectionShadowsFromWallsBehind3.png
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Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Now you can paste this into your Elevation. Only the Shadow polygons will be pasted. In the below image I pasted the shadow polygons and also moved them 8000 mm up so I can take a look at them and sort out the ones I need.
This is the good thing about the "Overlapping Polygons" setting: it will copy and paste all shadow polygons. Apparently those shadow polygons that were not visible in the 3D Window were generated by ARCHICAD, but were hidden behind other Walls. This is how to get their geometry.
SectionShadowsFromWallsBehind4.png
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AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
In this example I needed only the one shadow that is lighter than the others. I can move that one back to its proper position in the Elevation, maybe bring it forward in the Display order and it is done. I can just delete the other pasted shadow polygons that I don't need.

The reason some of the shadow polygons were different in color was because they were cast on different surfaces. If you change the Surfaces prior to generating the 3D with shadows, then after copy-paste, it will probably be easier to select using Find & Select only the polygons you need. This of course applies only if it is tedious to select the needed polygons manually because of there are many complex and overlapping pasted shadow polygons.

I think this is easier to do than to explain so it should not take more than 2 minutes.

Unfortunately, if the geometry behind the Section line changes, you will have to redo this.
It may be a good idea to place these pasted shadow polygons on a separate layer for easier management.
SectionShadowsFromWallsBehind5.png
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm currently facing the same issue with council requesting sun shadows on neighbouring elevations. I followed your method, however, couldn't paste the hidden overlapping shadows. It only pasted the visible shadows in the parallel view. Any update on this? Looks like this may have been working in AC20 and may have been phased out in AC21?? Any help would be much-appreciated Thanks!
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Is the 3D Viewpoint using the Vectorial Engine?
It will not work with the OpenGL Engine.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
Are there any updates on this? I have set up some basic slabs in AC20 and the overlapping polygons work. Same setup in AC22 and they do not?
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
Could you post a screenshot of the exact issue you are experiencing?
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Anonymous
Not applicable
sbyrnes wrote:
I'm currently facing the same issue with council requesting sun shadows on neighbouring elevations. I followed your method, however, couldn't paste the hidden overlapping shadows. It only pasted the visible shadows in the parallel view. Any update on this? Looks like this may have been working in AC20 and may have been phased out in AC21?? Any help would be much-appreciated Thanks!
I'm experiencing the same thing.

We recently upgraded from AC19 to AC22 and now in 22 it does not work any more - it only pastes the visible shadows. I went back and tested the method in 19 to make sure I wasn't going crazy and it worked perfectly with all overlapping fills from hidden elements in different colours as usual pasted into the elevation view.

This is a really important part of most development applications these days and this technique has been an office standard that no longer works.
Daniel Kovacs
Graphisoft Alumni
Graphisoft Alumni
Hi,

I looked into this issue, and apparently the "Overlapping Polygons" option stopped working in ARCHICAD 21, and they produce the same result as "Calculate Split Polygons". I let the Developers know about this, hopefully they will be able to fix it soon (task #266367 in our system).

As a workaround I would try something like what Rob suggested. If you take the elements in the foreground in the 3D Vectorial window, override them all to 'Glass - Clear Fast' (using any method you'd like: e.g. Graphic Override Rules), and then copy the shadow polygons like that, you can get the entire covered shadow.
I tried it this way, it seems to be working like this.

Regards,
Daniel Alexander Kovacs

Professional Services Consultant

GRAPHISOFT



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Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi Daniel,

For some reason I did not get a notification of your reply so this is a bit out of date now but we could not get any method to work so had to resort to a manually drafted shadow elevation. Luckily this was a simple little job and that was feasible but for a bigger more contentious job we would be pretty stuck without the tried and tested copy and paste of overlapping polygons method.

I just went back and tried your override to glass method and could not get it to work either. In vectorial 3d I can see the shadow on the side of the glass wall that it is being cast on, but when I navigate behind the wall to do the copying I can't see it and it is not picked up by the copy command.

Am I missing something?

Pat