Topic Title

Some enhancements to further improve Sunshader:

1. Presently, animation of the sun's path throughout a day is possible. It would also be beneficial to be able to animate the sun's orbit for a longer period such as for a typical year. This is useful in locations closer to the equator as the sun can move from being north of a building to being south and this impacts how a building is designed, including location and orientation of rooftop PV's etc.

2. Include key dates such as the equinox and solstices (NH and SH) allowing a quick assessment of these maximum times,

3. Add a Record button to be able to record and save to file each animation (MP4/AVI).

4. Add the ability to display line overshoots and some sketch line types to aid the conceptual look with saved images,

5. Add a similar option to the 'Save image to DataCAD' / Superimpose saved image which works great with plan views, and do something similar for elevation views. With a white background and only shadows visible, this should allow shadows to be added to elevations in a similar manner.

Hi Mark,

Your suggestions make a lot of sense to me, and I expect that DataCAD should be able to implement most of them (subject to their own resources and priorities!).

Whilst it does not replace the functionality you have suggested, I wanted to draw attention to my macro. It is specifically designed to allow you to analyse shadows cast on a specified surface over an extended period such as a full year at specific time intervals (as you suggested in your first point), or for specific dates (as you suggested in your second point ... the macro can calculate solstice and equinox dates or you can enter your own specific dates).

This macro does not replace Sun Shader (or my own shadow macro or Prasad's proposed macro): It's intention is to enable you to identify dates/times that may require further investigation and the generation of diagrams. It is limited to analysing one surface at a time (e.g. a window or pv array etc), but does not tie up DataCAD for large amounts of time (the macero's DataCAD interface transfers data to a standalone program which does the analysis in the background whilst you continue to use DataCAD).

I perceived a use for the functionality provided by this macro, but there has been very limited interest in it since it was introduced about a year ago so I have not pursued any possible further enhancements (such as the ability to process multiple surfaces or to produce data that could be imported back into datacad in the form of shadow diagrams).

Regards,
David H.

Hi David,
Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't aware of this new macro (I thought I'd subscribed to your mailing list but the reminder may have gone unnoticed?). All of our work is created predominantly using smart entities supplemented by other 2D/3D entities. Does this Shadow Analysis macro work with smart entities as I recall earlier comment with the Shadow Macro at the time of release not working with smart entities due to some limitation with DCAL?
FWIW, I think you are doing excellent work with add-on macros for DataCAD.