| ILLUSTRATING SHADOWS September 7, 2008 (almanac data, bi-filar dial improvements, and construction alignment lines, DeltaCAD v TurboCAD comparisons, notes on programming DeltaCAD expanded, minor fix to azimuth dial plate for some longitude deltas, azimuth dial plate can be winter or summer on outer scale, 7 calendar circles as opposed to just 3, v-dec and h-dial improvements also, and many other updates) |
| Illustrating Shadows ~ ISBN 0-9765286-8-1 ~ Lib Cong 2005900674 About 300 pages of hands on, empirical, geometric, trigonometric, CAD, and spreadsheet dial design with 100 pages of charts, tables, formulae, and lists of useful information . THIRD EDITION ~ Table of contents. This edition has expanded tables, more formulae, and more detailed chapters on CAD, vrml. The best book on gnomonics. Much new material. You get a free CD of booklets, spreadsheets, VRML/WRL files, templates, etc with the book. FOR A FREE SAMPLE... try Simple Shadows or PayPal here to buy. Illustrating More Shadows ~ ISBN 0-9765286-9-X ~ Lib Cong 2006930654 About 300 pages, this book continues Illustrating Shadows, and focuses on 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. Sample here. Get CD here. Case studies abound with associated problems solved, and cover the infamous inclined decliner, as well as all the other kinds of outdoor dials. |
| Programming DeltaCAD sundials sun dials |
| Book purchase options are here... |
| NOTE: Many minor enhancements to many of the programs, especially the azimuth and north facing dials, vertical and horizontal dials and so on. Most dial programs are now collected together so a main menu selects a sub program. The original programs are still in the zip file but zipped to minimise confusion if you liked the old file names. The notes are expanded to cover printing large dial plates, and small selections of a displayed dial. Current macros are also here but using a txt file for parameters (which you can still override)(but read notes on how to run the macros from DeltaCAD, always fun from DeltaCAD, MACRO/E/FILE/OPEN and never by double clicking in a folder, and never by clicking the history of files when you do MACRO/E/FILE,historyname. The parameter file holds latitude, longitude, and reference longitude for legal time. August 18, 2008 NOTE: all DeltaCAD macros in WinZIP form This has the three versions of the macros, i.e. original separate files, current with a parameter file, and current but no parameter file. All allow overriding the dial location. NOTE: Many of the dials above including the Shepherd and Azimuth dials are animated ~ great education tool to see how hour lines, shadows, and calendar/declination lines move as latitude automatically steps up, or to see how the shadow follows a calendar curve. The vertical decliner will also animate if dec set to 0, see how hour lines, SD, and SH vary with declination. Do not use animation mode if you are epileptic. NOTE: The calendar curves program can be used to draw calendar lines for any hour angle dial. The design latitude for the "calendar curves" is the SH of the actual dial, and the "noon" line of the "calendar curve dial" is placed on the SD line of the actual dial. Pay attention to the SSL or GLH to make sure you are using the correct distance. Pay attention to longitude correction, the best method is to use the calendar line points as angle from SD and distance with no longitude correction, and transpose the results to the vertical dial's SD. These are tools, and are a good blend of applying knowledge using tools at the higher levels of learning, rather than doing things by rote. NOTE: The JustBASIC page has the H, V and V-dec dials, the P and M dials, the declination curves, and the inclined meridian dial in BASIC that uses JustBASIC which is free of charge. Also there is a Pascal, C, FORTRAN, java, Visual Basic, etc dial program collection, as well as links to their free compilers, in their respective pages. For those links, see below at the bottom of this web page. KEY POINT: DeltaCAD vs TurboCAD programming comparison: TurboCAD took the approach of using Microsoft's languages rather than the approach taken by DeltaCAD which was to integrate a stable third party vendor's BASIC package. While this may have simplified TurboCAD's work, it must be remembered that Microsoft dropped languages, which reduced the options available to the programmer when writing TurboCAD scripts. Then, the languages themselves are not stable, they evolve as much as does JAVA, so features may become obsolete, making maintenance an issue for someone programming scripts for TurboCAD. Finally, the programming option is only available in TurboCAD Professional, which costs much more than the TurboCAD Deluxe variant. All these factors, combined with the ease of DeltaCAD stable BASIC programming platform have made DeltaCAD the standard for the sundial community. Additionally, while TurboCAD scripts allow 3d model construction, even the 2d scripts run slowly; this makes DeltaCAD animation (which most Illustrating Shadows DeltaCAD macros offer) practical, whereas the slow speed makes animation by programming in TurboCAD much less practical. HOW TO PROGRAM DELTACAD MACROS ~ CLICK HERE for Notes on how to program DeltaCAD macros, a short extract from Illustrating More Shadows. The book has more examples and methods of constraining lines within calendar curves (declination curves), and other techniques. Illustrating More Shadows also has code for certain dials in other languages so you may compare programming languages, and techniques. Even covers the legacy languages! |
| MAIN VIRTUAL REALITY PAGE [avi-page.htm] |
| MAIN C/CPP [c++]PAGE [using the free C++ IDE] |
| Email comments or questions to the author at: illustratingshadows at yahoo dot com |
| MAIN COBOL FILE PAGE [the .COB files] |
| MAIN PASCAL FILE PAGE [using the free PASCAL IDEs] |
| MAIN Visual BASIC FILE PAGE [using the free Envelop system]] |
| MAIN Excel SPREADSHEET PAGE [using Microsoft Office] |
| MAIN BASIC FILE PAGE [using the free JustBASIC compiler] |
| MAIN FORTRAN PAGE [using the free GNU compiler] |
| NOTE: Also, see some TurboCAD macros (vbs) slow but work, for h and v-dec dials. |
| MAIN TURBO-CAD FILE PAGE (vbs macros and tcw) [tcw-files-you-can-download.html] |
| MAIN PDA/PalmPilot PAGE [Palm OS standalone, and, DocsToGo] |
| MAIN LISP PAGE [using ProgeSOFT CAD][AutoCAD] |
| DeltaCAD (is 2d only, but has a scripting language) ($39 approx) DeltaCAD's main web page is here NASS DeltaCAD page is here Carl Sabanski's DeltaCAD page is here FREE ~ The benefit of DeltaCAD is its scripting. NASS has many scripts available, and here are some of mine for horizontal and vertical dials for northern latitudes with longitude correction, the meridian dial both east and west, a horizontal dial with calendar lines, and an equatorial dial, N and S plates, calendar circles and sunrise/set lines, a polar dial, shepherd's dial, and the winged azimuth dial. Play with them and have fun, their suffix is ".bas", IMPORTANT NOTE ~ WHEN RUNNING THESE: If you double click the .BAS files themselves and thusly invoke DeltaCAD, you may get the "error in basic script" message. Always run DeltaCAD first, then MACRO, E, FILE OPEN, and then run. Do not use the file history in MACRO/E/FILE, instead always use the folder panel from MACRO/E/FILE/OPEN. A note is added in the data input panel of each macro as a reminder. August 18, 2008 There are three sets of macros ~ (1) the current macros that also use a parameter file so you can customize your macro execution for a given location (lat, long, ref long), (2) the current macros that do not use a parameter file, and (3) the original macros that are current but are separate files per dial type and sub type. All three versions available allow the user to override the default dial location. August 18, 2008 These are educational in design to show the transition from trig to code but they are not perfect software programs in that these are not glossy works of art. Other people have done much better polishing work than me.. The hour line, SD and SH angles, and calendar curves are correct, although sometimes the inclined decliner reverses the names of the hours, but then "inclined decliners are a problem entirely of the diallists own creation [Drinkwater]". The techniques of the horizontal calendar dial show some methods and programming methodology of interest, the meridian dial shows one method of constraining hour lines within calendar lines, and so on. Some notes on programming for DeltaCAD here. The animation is also highly educational, if a dial macro is animated it says so in its input window, and you enter a 0 in place of some key parameter which it identifies. As a rule, macros ending in "-a" have animation, DO NOT RUN animation if you are epileptic. By the way, all these programs were used in both my small portable dials as well as the large garden outdoor dials, so they are fully functional. NOTE ~ I use my own abbreviations as I found no standard ones. h(horizontal), v(vertical), p(polar), m(meridian), z(azimuth), q(equatorial), etc |
| DESCRIPTION FILE NAME [Files notes are in this zip file - download and unpack it] ALTITUDE DIALS planispheric astrolabe alt-astrolabes.bas the planispheric astrolabe generator - and notes on formula derivation, depicted horizontally and also, the rete shown vertically aligned and clutter removed shepherd's dial alt-shepherds.bas Shepherd's dial using true declinations not fixed ones, animated, much better curves. both single and dual dual gnomon (long for winter short for summer) AZIMUTH DIALS winged azimuth dial azi-winged-azimuth.bas Summer/equinox/winter hour lines [can animate hour lines w latitude, 7 month circles, dial plate options] HOUR ANGLE DIALS simple bi-filar h dial MAIN-bifilar.bas Bi filar dial (h-dial with hour angles of 15 degree separation) with a gnomon as two wires of differing heights horizontal dial MAIN-h-dials.bas Horizontal dial, longitude/latitude specific, and for north or south hemisphere, and calendar lines & gnomon based on sub-style length [can animate hour-lines w latitude], and sub style length is fixed - gnomon linear height varies. And a horizontal dial whose shadow is animated using a given solar declination, thus can do calendar lines and curves for h-dials, and so on and on and on.. August 11, 2008 24 hour h-dial, Roman/Arabic inclined decliner MAIN-inc-dec.bas Inclined decliner dial plate design. meridian dial MAIN-m-dials.bas Meridian dial constrains the hour lines to the calendar lines meridian dial true east and west inclined dial polar dial MAIN-p-dial.bas with calendar lines and longitude adjusted equatorial dial MAIN-q-dial.bas with calendar circles and sunrise/set lines longitude adjusted vertical dial MAIN-v-dials.bas Simple vertical dials, declining and non declining , both hemispheres, and vertical declining dial, and if you enter declination of 0 it is animated, north hemisphere only vertical decliner for north or south hemisphere, with declinations so the dial faces largely east or west vertical declining dial but facing the pole, not equator vertical declining dial for mostly east or west alignments , and so on and on and on. August 11, 2008 Roman/Arabic. MISC DIALLING AIDS calendar lines/curves MAIN-calendar-curves.bas calendar curves for a V or H dial using SH almanac and tables MAIN-almanac-tables.bas EOT (2 and 3 wave), Declination (small formula), as tables and graphs and other functions such as sunrise and sunset etc, and a daily almanac. |