[Radiance-general] Sun Charting Program?

[Rob Guglielmetti]

Fitzsimmons, Rob wrote:
> I have run across a few times on the web, diagrams that show the sun
> position over the course of say 6 months.
> I can't recall what that chart-type is called, but it looks somthing
> like this:
> http://www.rastermon.com/images/SunPath.gif
>
> I used a tool from University of Oregon,
> http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SunChartProgram.html
>
> then Photoshop'd my obviously fake green line indicating the sun's
> position.
> They show up in these figure-8 patterns.
>
> Anyone know a way to produce them?
>   

Hi Rob,

Axel Jacobs has a nice page explaining these diagrams here:

http://www.learn.londonmet.ac.uk/packages/clear/visual/daylight/analysis/hand/sunpath_diagram.html

Ecotect is one commercially-available program that can produce these 
charts.  Francesco Anselmo created a python script to overlay these on a 
Radiance fisheye view, which is very cool, but I never was able to use 
it correctly.

The figure eight pattern is called an analemma, and there are some cool 
links with info about this as well:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/art/analemma.html
http://www.uwm.edu/~kahl/Images/Weather/Other/analemma.html
http://www.analemma.com/