Shadow cast and sun rays

[Anonymous]

Hi,

did you see this article? http://danieloverbey.blogspot.com/2016/05/five-ecotect-functions-that-need-to-be.html#!/2016/05/five...

I really miss the functionality you had in Ecotect for visualising sun ray angles. It was just Orange lines, ut it was a strong Visual tool to check when and how the sun would hit glazing/shading.

Also, the shadown cast functionality that is a type of "frequency diagram" of where shading Objects cast a shadow throughout the day/year.

Hope you will concider it.

[scheerd]

Yes those are cool, and I miss them too.  I've done a ton of projects proving reflection issues or not using the Ecotect ray-casting tools.

There are a lot of great feature available to create that using Dynamo.  Revit is a pretty dense platform for doing work like that with a lot of geometry (lines and points) dynamically drawn in the Revit window, but the Dynamo visualization windows are super fast, and the tools are very customizable.

Look for the Roudsari tools for Dynamo, and also references on ray-casting for reflections and sound and visual field projects in Dynamo.  It's really quite easy to use after a couple days getting over the steep part of the learning curve.  One more step and you're into RevitAPI so you can create your own ray-casting tools in Revit.

David

[Anonymous]

Thank you for replying!

I'll take a look at Dynamo and Roudsari the next Project where it's applicable and I have the time and energy to tackle a steep learning curve!

Solar shading is often a neglected topic, but causing much annoyance and is vital for Visual comfort, indoor climate and energy performance. I would've hoped with the increased demand for BREEAM, WELL, LEED, Passive house etc. that such functionality as in Ecotect would be more accessible instead of less. Hope to see some additions to user friendlyness soon.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi,

did you see this article? http://danieloverbey.blogspot.com/2016/05/five-ecotect-functions-that-need-to-be.html#!/2016/05/five...

I really miss the functionality you had in Ecotect for visualising sun ray angles. It was just Orange lines, ut it was a strong Visual tool to check when and how the sun would hit glazing/shading.

Also, the shadown cast functionality that is a type of "frequency diagram" of where shading Objects cast a shadow throughout the day/year.

Hope you will concider it.

---

[scheerd]

I would also suggest using the Insight Solar tool to assess site shading. While it doesn't show grayscale shadow extents, I believe the info is actually more useful, as it shows solar intensity, which is basically scaled shadows with the actual energy felt from the sun in those location. For assessing where to put a sunny hangout area on a site, for example, you'd want to put it where you get key hours of hot sun, not a couple hours of early morning or late evening sun (unless those are the specs, of course). The Lighting tool is also a good assessor of direct sun using the Solar Access analysis type. It's only for a day at a time, but it will show you the number of hours of direct sun on a site or in a room in a visual graphic.

d