After relocating the sun direction with the Solar North extension, my shadows are being cast from the north versus south
Could you share the SKP file or at least a screen shot?
Did you geolocate the model? what is the latitude set to?
I have not geo located the site yet. its in a heavy wooded area and no adress or landmarks Im just trying to get an approximation of the sun angle based on my knowlege of the site and based on the survey. my model is built with the north elevation facing away from the positive green axis so I used solar north to rotate the sun angle rather than rotate the model. I have uploaded the skp file
To what angle did you set the sun direction? You can find out by typing the following in the SketchUp Ruby Console:
Sketchup.active_model.shadow_info[“NorthAngle”]
Where did you upload it?
maybe I did it wrong. I just hit the upload button and inserted the file
I don’t see it anywhere. Maybe it’s too large?
yes I think your right. 38 megs. Ill delete a bunch of elements and resend
The forum has a 3MB limit for uploads. One workaround is to load it to the 3D Warehouse and then share the link here.
OK. thanks. can you give me some pointers on how to load to 3dW? Do I list it as public or private and how do i get the link to send you.
Im sorry I have to leave for an hour or so. Ill get back to you when I return
You will need to make it public or we won’t be able to access it. If you are unsure how to copy the link here, you could just give the model a distinctive name in the 3DW, post the name here, and we can search for it.
Try clicking the “Enter North Angle” button on the Solar North toolbar, type 0 into the dialog and click OK. That should realign the north direction with the green axis.
Anssi
Here’s the link:
https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/warehouse/getpubliccontent?contentId=91ea8838-ae07-48f3-9d8d-110cf182d4c4
Nameis Shurburtt residence if that doesn’t work
As said, your current North direction is set to something more than 200 degrees. It measures clockwise from the Green (Y) axis, and you should set it to 0 to reset it.
Another way is to open the Ruby Console window and type
Sketchup.active_model.shadow_info["NorthAngle"]=0.0
Anssi
. I set it there on purpose. my model is not built according to the default north. Im trying to keep from rotating the model. Isn’t that the point of Solar North or am I misunderstanding the extension?
You are probably misunderstanding the default SketchUp axis directions. By default, the green (y) axis points to the “north” and on a plan view the sun rises from the east/right and rotates clockwise from that and sets to the left. On your model you have set the north direction to be, on a plan view, to the left and down (southwest). It is OK if your house is facing that way.
Anssi
so then in order to get my north facing elevation (which faces the bottom of the screen on the model) I need to rotate the entire model 180deg. Also since the actuall house does not sit exactly with the cardinal directions, I will have to rotate the model off access to get the true condition. see attached
SHURBURTT TOPO-Insert 1.dwg (629.8 KB)
sorry ill send in pdf
At local noon in the geolocated coordinates, the sun is by default located out the negative green axis, meaning that shadows are cast along the positive green axis. When you change the NorthAngle, a positive change moves the sun toward the negative red axis (clockwise rotation about blue/z) causing shadows to shift toward the positive red direction. You have a NorthAngle value of about 207 degrees, meaning that the sun is rotated from negative green all the way past positive green (180 degrees) and on into the positive red-green quadrant. That means that shadows at local noon will fall into the negative red-green quadrant. It is as if North lies in the negative red-green quadrant.