[Plugin] ShadowProjector
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Thanks to you and all the others who give so freely of your time to help. I'm an "old school" architect/contractor that designs and builds large luxury homes in East Tennessee. Sat in front of a drawing board for years (and years) and only in the last 10 or so have begun to enjoy the amazing technology available these days. Sketchup and Layout have helped immeasurably in consultation with my clients and subcontractors in the field. Again, much thanks to all. . .
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@tig said:
Since 'shadow-projection' is usually relating to 'massing' studies, have you considered making some simple massing blocks [grouped] on their own layer[s], then switch off those layers belonging to the complex parts of the model you no longer need, and then retry shadow-projection
That's essentially the point my buildings are already at; simplified down to less than a couple hundred faces each. Can't go much farther, since the actual buildings are fairly complex in footprint and roofline, which of course both affect the shadows.
If it helps, what I have is basically an apartment complex of 2-3 story buildings, 86 buildings of about 8-10 floorplans in all, with roughly 150 9' tall carports. The client wants to know, based on our typical shading criteria, (no shade at all between 9AM and 4PM local time any day of the year) which carports are good candidates for solar installation. Complicating matters, though the buildings are clustered, no two clusters are alike, and many are so close together that a carport in one cluster can be shaded by a building in an adjacent cluster.
Obviously, even just selecting 150 unconnected faces isn't practical each time, so my usual solution in a situation like this is to create a single face at the relevant level and find shadows over the whole thing. That doesn't work so well when that face is 55 acres. Even trying to do it a few carports at a time sometimes crashes.
This is the first time doing this on something this large and complex. Usually I can just trace out a few simple shadows by hand, but obviously having a tool to do that simplifies things greatly.
What I've been doing with ShadowProjector on simpler, smaller models is the following:- Create a plane where I want the shadows if one doesn't already exist, and make it a component for ease of handling later.
- Select the whole plane.
- Run ShadowProjector for 0900 12/22.
- Explode the component SP makes within my component, and fill the shaded area with whatever my "don't use" material is.
- Selecting only the remaining parts of the face, rerun SP for 1200 12/22
- Repeat the explode-and-fill, running projections for 1600 12/22, then 1600 6/22 and 0900 6/22, adding in times as needed to get a reasonably accurate shading pattern.
- Check morning and evening shadows for 3/22 and 9/22, and run more projections if needed
This way, the area of interest gets smaller with each run, and I have a fairly accurate picture of the areas that are never shaded during the best daylight hours.
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OK, consistent splat on this one. I can run Shadowprojector on the two at right for 12/21 09:00 and it works, but either of the left ones, which shouldn't have any shade anyway, will splat.
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Of course it shouldn't splat !
But if a face is not receiving any shadows why include it in the process ?If I process a face in shadow it works, a face in shadow and one NOT works but the un-shaded face gives an error in the Ruby Console [which of course it shouldn't!] - some kind of transformation error...
If I try and process just the un-shaded face on its own I too get a splat.
Some something is clearly adrift...
I'm investigating...
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@tig said:
But if a face is not receiving any shadows why include it in the process ?
Normally I wouldn't in a model this simple, but in something more complex, I tend to just select all the faces of interest on each run. Those faces would be shaded for the 16:00 run, so in a complex model I wouldn't be picking each one individually. I was only checking them one at a time this time because I wanted to narrow the problem down as much as possible to see if there was something goofy with my model first.
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it's working on my mac...
john
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I've worked out the issue.
It IS to do with empty groups - there's an intersection needed but if there is nothing to intersect it was splatting...
With a % text it's NOT empty so no issues !
Now I have it trapped and so far in retesting there's not splatting.
I'm preparing an update.
I'll also get it signed for v2016 full compatibility... -
Here's v5.0 http://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TIG_shadowProjector Main changes:
- Unshaded face splat trapped.
- Text better placed.
- Signed for v2016 full compatibility.
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@tig said:
I've worked out the issue.
It IS to do with empty groups - there's an intersection needed but if there is nothing to intersect it was splatting...
With a % text it's NOT empty so no issues !
Now I have it trapped and so far in retesting there's not splatting.That makes perfect sense now; even on the full model, it didn't splat on the first run, but after I'd exploded the shadow lines and marked the shaded areas, the remaining area was split into multiple faces, and apparently some of those were empty.
5.0 is working perfectly on a couple of the smaller sections. I'm tempted to test it on the full model when I have some free time.
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MUCHAS GRACIAS.....
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Hello Friend.
You made a very good plugin. But I have problems in using it. I get artifacts with a shadow. Can you help me with this problem?
I installed this plugin in 2017 -
@newvector said:
Hello Friend.
You made a very good plugin. But I have problems in using it. I get artifacts with a shadow. Can you help me with this problem?
I installed this plugin in 2017
Please explain these 'artifacts' more fully.
Use a screen-shot or even a small SKP example... -
Hi
I regret the inconvenience. That's my fault. I reduced the value of the variable 've.length' too much. This led to the appearance of artifacts. Now everything is fine, I changed this value to 0.00001.mm
The value chosen by you 0.25mm is not very good, it generates additional points when the scene is exporting. -
This tool is incredibly useful... thank you very much TIG!
Do you plan to update it? I'm using it in Sketchup 2018, and it's very slow, even though the geometry is simple.
Neither it is able to create the percentages.Best regards!!!
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i just want to leave my thanks
this helped me to get the sketch-up shadow over into autocad
still needed a bit trickery but still a step closer to getting all these programs closer together
keep on tig! -
Great plugin for shadow analysis!
If I may suggest a few improvements:
- ability to project shadows on grouped faces, so if you select a group with faces, shadows are also projected there and you don't have to explode groups,
- applying the projecton wouldn't reset the selection,
- make an automatic text tablel (outside the shadow face) only informing at what time of day a projection was taken.
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I also noticed that the instance ID of a projected shadow-face shows wrong hour (the difference is always 2 hours). As in example below: I projected a shadow at 17:00 and it says 19:00.
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Thanks for the report on the time-stamp error.
There was also an error with the % formatting in the newer SketchUps.
Here's v6.0 https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TIG_shadowProjectorI've fixed the issue with those incorrect UTC time-stamps, and the error with sprintf %. It's also been re-signed.Apparently the incorrect time-stamp from the UTC AND ignored DaylightSavings when reported by SketchUp's ShadowInfo have been known for some time. But I've only just learnt of the workaround when extracting the time from the data, which I think now fixes it...
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Wow, you did this faster than I could think
Thanks, it's fixed!
Are you perhaps going to further develop this plugin? Implementing these three points would be so cool! -
Here's v7.0 https://sketchucation.com/pluginstore?pln=TIG_shadowProjector The original Selection is now kept on completion.
The Time & Date [...@hh:mm-mo-dd] is now added to the Shadow group's name for clarity - so it's easier to find and select in the Outliner.
It has been re-signed.
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