Solar Path Building Design Simulation
Before the days of modern, inexpensive, 3D computer graphics, a heliodon (precisely-movable light source) was used to show the angle of the sun on a physical model of a proposed building. Today, mathematical computer models calculate location-specific solar gain (shading) and seasonal thermal performance, with the ability to rotate and animate a 3D color graphic model of a proposed building design.
Passive solar building design heating and cooling issues can be counterintuitive (like roof-angled glass). Precise performance calculations and simulations are essential to help avoid reinventing the wheel and duplicating previously-made expensive experimental construction errors (like a summer solar furnace).
Read more about this topic: Sun Path
Famous quotes containing the words solar, path, building, design and/or simulation:
“The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves,”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“Westerners inherit
A design for living
Deeper into matter—
Not without due patter
Of a great misgiving.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey’s fits and starts, rehearses life’s own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)