Shadow analyse on a building facade

[tom858]

Hi,

First i will excuse for my bad english... I'm from Swiss... now my Problem.

I have a any building facade and the neighboring buildings generated shadow on the building facade. Now i divided the facade in different areas and would like to analyse this areas.

The script should print out the following information in a *.csv or other Files.
Area in the shade -> Yes or No based on date / time. For the decision e.g. Yes, should be adjustable for example a percentage of 70% in the shadow area = YES

is this possible in ruby to solve?

To any assistance I am very grateful.

thx tom858

[TIG]

Try http://www.1001bit.com/ which has a 'shadow tool' that makes shadows as 3d geometry - it might do what you want - it's a pay-script [$50] with a 30 day free-trial...
It would be possible to write your own tool using shadow information like sun-direction and then project vertices of your building onto another 3D shape and join the points... BUT it'd be rather complicated

[Phil Rader AIA]

these plugins may do what you are looking for:

http://sketchup.google.com/green/analysis.html

IES:

http://www.iesve.com/Software/VE-Ware

Energy Plus:

http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/openstudio.cfm

the greenspace plugin website is not active any longer
here is a youtube of it

here is another option:

http://sketchup.google.com/green/solar.html

[AdamB]

Just to add to the list, LightUp (http://light-up.co.uk) performs realtime Solar analysis all from inside SketchUp (in the same Window).

Here's a realtime capture of it in use comparing Summer and Winter insolation.

[flash=640,480:3897kuqs]http://www.youtube.com/v/jxPyMvI_EqI[/flash:3897kuqs]