| ILLUSTRATING SHADOWS focusing on education and interesting practical aspects of sundial design FREE Open Office SPREADSHEETS using Open Office which is also free, mostly but not quite Excel (xls) compatible *** Try cubicShadows.ods spreadsheet very small, easy, and does most dialling stuff *** |
| FREE ~ DAY SPECIFIC SPREADSHEETS FOR DIALING ~ using Open Office ~ (try the Palm Pilot Docs To Go versions also, here) Two spreadsheets for Illustrating Shadows are in Open Office format, the main sheet and the EOT sheet. Excel and Open Office are nearly the same but not quite. So I have changed the formula syntax for Open Office. This general dial spreadsheet (illustrating-shadows.ods) which uses this complete EOT spreadsheet (illustrating-shadows-eot.ods) which have been fine tuned for Open Office. This works as is on both Win32 XP as well as win64 Vista (which uses the win32 open office code). 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. Most of the Illustrating Shadows Excel spreadsheets will work asis, however, conditional formatting and some charts are different, as is the syntax for a few cell manipulations. 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 cpmpass 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 H dial [plus altitude and azimuth], 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 Pie charts for hr line angles 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 (a major simplification and rewrite April 4) Middleton scales Astronomical EOTs (static), which hyperlinks to the general EOT spreadsheet with many formulae including the astronomical version. 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 More Shadows 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) also the ANALEMMA page has spreadsheets for all hour line analemmas. |
| 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 *** these spreadsheets deliberately use several different EOT formulae, and they do not all agree. This is so people can play with different formulae. Just be aware that they differ sometimes by up to a minute. THE MAIN EOT SPREADSHEET DOES USE THE ASTRONOMICAL FORMULA HOWEVER WHICH IS THE INDUSTRY STANDARD. |
| NOTE: There are more PDA based spreadsheets that work on Excel than these PC based Excel sheets. So, download the PDA sheets as well. |
| If you use Microsoft Office, use my Excel spreadsheets, and not these Open Office ones. There are many subtle differences so Excel sheets with special features do not work in Open Office and vice versa. Please read these notes here that discuss Microsoft Office, Open Office and Documents to Go. |
| OPEN OFFICE not for Microsoft Office, nor for MS Works spreadsheets. 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 and the analemma sheets are here. |
| Aug 2, 2009: analemma.ods and here for Excel does an X radius (based on EOT) for a Y distance (based on solar declination) for an EOT bobbin for an armillary dial of a given radius. Notes are here, see also DeltaCAD. Aug 9, 2009: DL values have been added back for vertical decliners, helpful for those who want analemmas on vertical decliners. See the analemma notes here, analemma page here. Nov 23, 2009 EOT and long.diff combined worksheet Jan 7, 2010 Main menu simplified, see above. Jan 15, 2010 New simple spreadsheets added microShadows.ods simpleShadows.ods, and cubicShadows.ods and they match the free books Micro Shadows, Simple Shadows, and Cubic Shadows. May 8, 2010 Added what the analemma looks like in the sky |
| To the right is the Illustratijng-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: illustrating-shadows, available in Excel (.xls), Open Office (.ods), and MS Works form (.wks). Each is more complex than the last. In fact, cubicShadows is so good it also now in the main spreadsheet as well. |
| NOTE: based on user feedback, cells that should not be changed are now protected. Do ALT-T, P, and choose "S" the unprotect option if you want to change other cell data. |
| 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. |