| ILLUSTRATING SHADOWS focusing on education and interesting practical aspects of sundial design FREE Open Office SPREADSHEETS using Open Office which is also free *** Try cubicShadows.ods spreadsheet very small, easy, and does most dialling stuff *** |
| FREE ~ DAY SPECIFIC SPREADSHEETS FOR DIALING ~ using Open Office (Try the PalmPilot docsToGo versions here, they are simple one page displays) The spreadsheet for Illustrating Shadows is in Open Office format, a version exists for Excel also. This general dial spreadsheet (illustratingShadows.ods) has been fine tuned for Open Office. Open Office is *** FREE *** and can be found here at http://www.openoffice.org/, it takes a long time to download from Open Office, and the first time you start it up it also takes some time. The Illustrating Shadows Excel spreadsheet will work asis, however, conditional formatting and some charts are different, as is the syntax for a few cell manipulations, auto fill, hyperlinks, and so on. Hence why I have Open Office specific sheets for you. Open Office will open an Excel spreadsheet, but Excel cannot open Open Office sheets. If you email spreadsheets, best to save in Excel (.xls) format. TABLE OF CONTENTS Your latitude: eg 32.75 Your longitude: eg 108.20 Legal meridian longitude: eg 105 Julian day (1-366) eg 253 Astro compass degree method (versus time method) adjustment Almanac page with lots of data, and noon transit table for each day, you add (west) or subtract (east) long diff from legal time meridian.S EQUATORIAL: Q-dial with calendar circle radii and sunrise/set horizontal line distances. HORIZONTAL: H dial [plus altitude and azimuth], VERTICAL: V dial, ...non decliner Ceiling dials V decliner (the standard formula, and also a new derived formula)(with charts) V meridian Polar dial Analemmatic Sunrise-set - EOT mm.ss Sunrise-set EOT decimal Reverse engineering an h-dial Legal standard time (not summer time) to sun's hour angle, optionally corrected for longitude and EOT, useful for astro compasses Wall declination Middleton scales EOT combined with a longitude shift, useful for generic dials moved from the legal meridian Declining recliners Lunar phases Declination line design aid ~ ~ See Declining Shadows which is a summary, or Illustrating Time's Shadow which has an in depth discussion, for descriptions of this feature. Analemma curve ~ ~ any latitude and longitude, for any time whatsoever for h-dials (horizontal) at latitude 0 this is a polar dial, and reversing signs and hours, this works for a vertical dial, and by messing with the time while using SD and SH and D.LONG this works for decliners also. There are very few times and latitudes where this doesn't work well, and the spreadsheet makes it easy for you to "tweak" it. Actual formal design latitudes are +0 to +60, times are 08.00 to 16.00 Planispheric astrolabe (matches the DeltaCAD macro, or, see this page here for geometry of the astrolabe) |
| Sundial Sun Dial Sundials Sun Dials Design Book Books articlesspreadsheets Gnomics Gnomonics Horology Dialling Dialing Clocks EOT Equation of time Middleton Sciathics Lunar Moon construction hobby gnomon cutout popup building astro compass astrocompass shepherd ogee azimuth altitude hour angle |
| Email comments or questions to the author at: illustratingshadows at yahoo dot com |
| Book purchase options are here... |
| NOTE: Here are more PDA based spreadsheets that work in Open Office. So, download the PDA sheets as well. |
| If you use Microsoft Office, use my Excel spreadsheets, as the Open Office ones will not work in Excel. Please read these notes that discuss Microsoft Office, and Open Office |
| OPEN OFFICE not for Microsoft Office, nor for MS Works spreadsheets. NOTE: Most dial plates in these spreadsheets also show the dial plate graphically, and have a tool to correct the aspect ratio. NOTE: When you start the main spreadsheet, enter a Julian day in cell E7. This is to allow you to enter any Julian day. NOTE: Some servers have started to send xxxxxxxxxxx.ods files (OPEN OFFICE) as xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.zip, so things didn't work. I have put all normal Open Office sheets into one ZIP file here. The current OPEN OFFICE system can use the Excel spreadsheets asis, so feel free to look at the Excel page as well. NOTE: IF you enter data in a yellow box and Open Office adds wierd stuff, then go to the top line of Open Office, select the cell and add blanks. Open Office autofill is the problem. Just hit delete, or, TOOLS, CELL CONTENT, AUTOFILL off. |
| To the right is the Illustrating-Shadows.ods main menu |
| THE FOUR OPEN OFFICE SPREADSHEETS PROVIDED ARE HERE microShadows h-dial only (extremely simple) simpleShadows h-dial, simple alt, azi (very simple) cubicShadows h,v,v-dec,q,a,p alt, azi (simple) illustrating… all functions (full strength) |
| There are four main spreadsheets, microShadows (and its free book), simpleShadows (and its free book), cubicShadows (and the Cubic Shadows free book), and the main spreadsheet: illustratingShadows, available in Excel (.xls), Open Office (.ods), and MS Works form (.wks). Each is more complex than the last. The archived original spreadsheet is here if interested, but it is not kept up to date, Excel format, but Open Office opens it properly. |
| Illustrating Time's Shadow ISBN 0-9765286-8-1 plus 0-9765286-9-X Lib Cong 2005900674 plus 2006930654 Merges Illustrating Shadows and Illustrating More Shadows, deletes duplicated material, and techniques that are complex and replaced by easier methods, adds new material. Hands on, empirical, geometric, trigonometric, CAD, and spreadsheet dial design for small dials plus garden dials using common masonry supplies, clay, and glass, with emphasis on many calendar line techniques, and inclined decliners, while providing details on the use of DeltaCAD programming including the animation of many sheets as parameters vary. Case studies abound with associated problems solved, and cover the infamous inclined decliner, as well as all the other kinds of outdoor dials. The printed book comes with a CD of booklets, spreadsheets, VRML/WRL files, templates, etc with the printed book. The CD has all books and booklets and programs along with source code. You can get the printed book and CD, just the CD, or an online download here. |
| illustrating-shadows.ods was renamed to illustratingShadows.ods for compatibility reasons. |
| If you download the spreadsheet, do a SAVE first and then a RUN, if you do RUN directly then the hyperlinks will not work. |