Site and sun

Put your building on its real site, with a map, terrain and neighbours, then study sun, shadows and daylight.

Setting the site's location places your building in its real surroundings and gives it the right sun for any date and time. From there you can make shadow study sheets, map sun hours, check daylight in rooms and match the model to a photo.

Set the location

Open Site from the side rail.

Under Location, use Search an address or place, or type the Latitude and Longitude.
Set True north, measured clockwise from plan up, so the sun and the plan's north arrow point the right way.
If the address lands in the middle of the road, press Place building on the map, then click the spot where the building stands. Esc cancels.

To tie the model to real survey coordinates, see Map coordinates.

Show the context around the building

Under Context, choose what to show and the Context area around the building (200 to 1,000 metres square):

Map underlay: Satellite or Streets, laid on the ground at true scale, or None.
Terrain: the shape of the ground from elevation data. Level the building pad flattens the ground under the building and blends it into the slope.
Surrounding buildings: neighbours' massing from OpenStreetMap footprints and heights. Their roofs are drawn flat.

The context sits in a locked group, so you can't select or paint it by accident. Walk mode follows the terrain. Refresh site data fetches it again, and Remove site takes it away. The map credits show in the corner whenever site data is on screen.

Set the sun

Under Sun & shadows, turn on Sun for sunlight and shadows at this place and time. Then set:

the Date;
the Time of day;
the UTC offset for the site's time zone. Daylight saving isn't applied for you, so include it in the offset when it applies.

Press Play the day to sweep the sun from early morning to evening and watch the shadows move. Press Stop to end it. At night, the lamps in your model take over; see Rendering.

Make a shadow study sheet

In Sheets, press New shadow study: the building from above on the equinox and solstices. You get a sheet of the building seen from above, plan north up, at 09:00, 12:00 and 15:00 on the equinox, midsummer and midwinter. Each picture is lit by the sun at the site for that date and hour. It's an ordinary sheet, so it follows the model and exports to PDF with the set. It needs the site's location. See Sheets.

Map sun hours

Under Sunlight & daylight → Sun hours:

Pick a Day to map: the equinox, midsummer, midwinter or the sun's current date.
Press Map sun hours.

A coloured map covers the ground and roofs around the building, from blue (no sun) to orange (sun all day). The panel shows the share of the ground and roofs with 2 hours of sun or more, and lists Sun on the windows (least first) with each window's facing and hours. Clear removes the map. It needs the site's location.

Check daylight in rooms

Press Check daylight to test the rooms on the active level under an overcast sky. No location is needed. For each room you get its average daylight factor (ADF) against the usual Target for its name, and the share of the room that Sees sky at desk height. View from above looks down on the map with the other levels hidden.

If you change the model afterwards, the panel says so; run the check again to update it.

Match a photo of the site

Choose Views → Match a photo… and pick a photo.

Drag the two red lines along east–west edges of the building in the photo, and the two green lines along north–south edges.
Drag the Origin square onto the model's origin.
Set the Camera height.

The model lines up as you drag. If it faces the wrong way, use Turn the model half round. Press Done to save a view that shows the photo over the model, at the strength you set with How strongly the photo shows.

Still stuck? Contact us, or ask in the app: Help → Contact support.