39 Shade Planning for America’s Schools Chapter 5 • Longitude and latitude of the school’s location. • Location of true north and true south. • Size, shape, and orientation of proposed buildings. • Growth patterns and locations of proposed plantings. • Time of day that solar noon occurs throughout the year at that longitude. Armed with that information and a working knowledge of solar geometry, it is possible to use mathematical and geometrical procedures to model the shade that will be cast by proposed structures and plantings. A number of computer software programs are available to do that work for you. Following are descriptions of two such programs, one of which has been developed for modeling sun and shade patterns for solar collectors, though it may well fit into the budgets and serve the purposes of some schools. The other is a program that has been designed specifically for shade planning. Visual Sun Chart www.visualsunchart.com/ Visual Sun Chart is a graphics program that was developed for visualizing solar shading to maximize the efficiency of solar collectors. It allows the user to model trees and buildings and, along with a free download, visualize the shade patterns that are cast. With Visual Sun Chart, a user can: • Model buildings and trees. • Export scenes to POV Ray 3.5, a free download that models shade produced by buildings and trees. • Create reports which give information about positions of the sun, times of sunrise and sunset, horizontal and vertical shadow angles, and angles of incidence. • View and print 3D models of sun movements. webShade www.shadeaudit.com.au www.webshade.com.au webShade is an interactive software package that allows users to prepare shade audits without the need for technical skills or expertise. Users can either scan their site plan into the computer or use a simple drawing program to create a 3D model of their site. On completion of the shade audit with webShade, the program produces a printed site plan, complete with shade solutions and simulated outcomes. Available as an internet download, a webShade user can: • Project existing summer and winter shade patterns. • Model alternative shade strategies. • Project the summer and winter shade patterns for those alternatives. • Prepare presentation-ready materials, including site-specific UV radiation information and design strategies.
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