| ILLUSTRATING SHADOWS focusing on education and interesting practical aspects of sundial design |
| Illustrating Shadows ~ ISBN 0-9765286-8-1 ~ Lib Cong 2005900674 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 PayPal here to buy. Illustrating More Shadows ~ ISBN 0-9765286-9-X ~ Lib Cong 2006930654 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. |
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| Book purchase options are here... |
Visual Basic notes on VB programming for dials including graphical dial plate drawing code for the 3 VB systems [ENVELOP, EXPRESS, and NET] in correct folders in WINZIP form _____________________________________________________________ F R E E _____________________________________________________________ ENVELOP: works on Windowx XP service pack 1 and 2 http://www.freebyte.com/programming/compilers/envelop.html This is a download a seven files, one install and six other parts totalling only 7mb. It installs easily, and works well. Its .exe files work, but cannot be easily exported to non Envelop computers due to required .dll files. There is a "publish" tool available, but personal experience shows that some .dll files are not in the exported version. Nevertheless, a 7mb download for the Envelop Visual Basic is a lot better than the compicated 60mb download using the Microsoft Visual Basic Express. My notes may prove very helpful in getting started with Envelop. Click here. Six pages of useful information, and two pages on Microsoft's Visual Basic Express. MICROSOFT EXPRESS: works on Windowx XP service pack 2 (not on sp1) Their Visual Basic 2005 Studio Express version for Windows XP service pack 2 only is about 60mb after an initial 3mb download and is downloadable for free for the hobbyist from their website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/downloads/default.aspx Creating published programs from this system is a typical Microsoft experience. The free Microsoft Visual Basic system is rather like lots of Microsoft software. Running the program it produces on another system is not simply a case of exporting it, rather it generates a series of tests of the target system, and a download of major proportions. _____________________________________________________________ L O W C O S T _____________________________________________________________ KBASIC For between $35 and $40, this system is well worth looking at, and unlike the Microsoft stuff, it is portable across some operating systems. http://www.kbasic.com _____________________________________________________________ VISUAL BASIC .NET 2003 For less than $100 this product is available from many online stores, has a solid book and the usual stack of Microsoft CDs. To locate this product, do an internet search on "visual basic net 2003" and the product installs easily and works first time. _____________________________________________________________ For the free 7mb Envelop Visual Basic system... a horizontal dial A very simple Visual Basic program using the free Envelop VB system. and .exe also Virus checked as of March 10, 2007 using Norton is longitude corrected however the .exe file cannot be run until you install the free Envelop VB system on your computer. It works on Windows XP service packs 1 and 2. and . . . The notes here show not only the source code for the hour line tables, they also show the code for the graphical depiction of the dial plate. The above in ZIP 220k The Visual Basic source, executable, and notes in zipped format for the free Envelop system. The notes also discuss Microsoft's Visual Basic Express and Visual Basic NET 2003, and also show the code for drawing graphically the hours lines for a horizontal dial. The code is not in the .zip file because (1) it is in the document and (2) "source" for Visual Basic consists of a lot more than just the event driven code. |
| PASCAL and sun dials - using the free compiler |
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| Email comments or questions to the author at: illustratingshadows at yahoo dot com |
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| MAIN Python PAGE (alternative to JAVA, heavily supported, easy to manage) |
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| visual basic programming sundials |
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| FORTRAN and sun dials - using the free compiler |
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| MAIN TURBO-CAD FILE PAGE ( vbs macros, programming notes, and tcw files ) |
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