Sawyer

I am working on a sun study and I need some help. There is a need to have this be pretty accurate and I don't know how accurate max can made a sun study. Now I am not talking about the rendered quality of the sun light I am talking about position.

This will be in Santa Fe, NM which is at 7,000' above sea level and in the MTs. The reason the sun need to be exact is that we are looking at adding solstice windows that only receive light on 1 day a year.

How accurate could this be?

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Antisthenes

Santa Fe Nm : (did you know the original capital was Cerrillos?)

latit. 35.68
long. -105.95

6.21 @ 12 (solar noon) clock time 1:06 azimuth -179.27 altitude 77.78

12.21 @ (solar noon) clock time 1:02 azimuth -179.82 altitude 30.85

3.21 '' 1:13 '' -179.66 altitude 54.32

need sun up and down times etc?
i used flamingo to get these #s

also i can make you a solar clock of the trajectory throughout the whole day to use as a guide for making your windows perpendicular too it.

now back to my own sun study i am doing for a 43 million dollar casino ...

pS elroy is editing this post to make sure i can't tell you about this method as a solution. please tell him you are not after a 1 way only solution would help shut his abuse of power down. thanks

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Sawyer

Thanks I think I need to be more clear. I guess I really want to know about importing DEM files or the like. I can use Max's sun system, the problem is there are mt to the west of the building. The sun system only works if you assume a flat horizon. What I need is to be able to find out what the horizon is from this house. So If I want sunset/rise on the summer solstice I need to know when the sun clears the mts not the horizon.

On second thought is just a pointless exercise?

There is some great stuff here
http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.php

but I have not been able to get a model to dl.

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alexg

Max's sun is quite accurate. I guess you will need to model the mountain and terrain and place it as accurate as possible. I can't see anyway else to do it.

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Alex G
www.3da.net.au/www.3designarchitect.com

Antisthenes

that's not so hard just get a level and a right angle with degrees on it and a compass. and the angles i gave you and measure the mountain on site at the different angles it will intersect the suns path and use your prog to get the elevation dif. between the peek and the site would be able to give you the same results from a topo map with no need to even use a model so huge also you could use method (see quote)
there is another name for this tool all in 1 it can even give you the ht. of the mountains. Glen Murkut showed it to me, i just forget the name.

what type of windows will u use? (how wide to not let other sun in)
and how important that sun just at the horizon of the site (specific) the sun being able to get or not get in to what area of the house is it?

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Camby1298

If you DEM files, then there are a couple of ways of making the terrain.

1) You can import the actual DEm into Max, although I dont suggest it, there are millions of faces when doing so and it will bogged down your machine. Although Max 9 is able to handle more geo/faces better, but I havent tried yet.

2) Using ArcScene and your DEM you can make a height map for 3Ds Max, there are histograms within ArcScene where you can adjust the highest point of you DEM map as pure white, and your lowest as pure black. From there you can set how many shades of greys in between (the higher number the more accurate it will be). Then, within mac create a plane with many faces (the more faces the more accurate it will be), use the displacement modifier and use the max elevation in your DEM as your max height. This way is not as accurate as importing the DEM, but for your purpose of sun study it will develop the needed land forms.

Locate your model within your DEM, and you should be set from there fro your sun/shade study. Since your residing within Cali, if you need more help let me know I will be happy to assist. Good luck!