Consistent lateral camera location when using Position Camera tool to produce Shadow Diagrams

Hi All,

In this YouTube video (Shadow Diagrams and Direct Daylight Access Studies with SketchUp - YouTube), the Position Camera tool is used to create a Shadow Diagram (Direct Daylight Access Study) of an interior space. One SketchUper has asked a very good question:

“This is so much easier than some of the other work arounds I’ve seen. There is one issue with this method though. If you’re attempting multi-level solar access diagrams, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make sure the camera is in the same alignment for each level. You have to go into orthogonal view to position the camera for the next level and it changes the view positioning every time. Saving views and trying to access previous view alignments doesn’t work either. If you have a solution for this i would love to hear it!”

I’ve tried to come up with a workable solution but haven’t come up with anything, does anyone else have any suggestions? Perhaps there’s a completely different, more robust process that someone can recommend?

Assuming the first scene in the batch has the camera set the way you want, create the other scenes without worrying about the camera too much. Then go back to the first scene. In the Scenes panel, select the scenes that need to be matched to the first, click the Update button, untick all the properties to update except Camera Position and then update the scenes. They will all wind up with the same position as the currently displayed scene.

Screenshot - 7_31_2022 , 9_54_48 PM

Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to lend your experience.

I think this would normally work, but what this person is trying to do is to create multi-level solar access diagrams, so although the Camera Plane is placed at the appropriate height (level in the model) using the Position Camera tool for the first analysis, this camera location is not correct to enable visibility and analysis of all the other levels in the model. Put another way, they would like the Camera Plane’s horizontal/lateral location to be static (for presentation clarity reasons the lateral/horizontal images should not move), but the camera’s vertical position should change (otherwise you would only ever see the same image over and over again, instead of 1 image per project level). I hope that clarifies their request.