shading with real sun

[frankie right]

i'd like to select shading with edges, no shadows, plus control my solar location. but in the advanced model graphics dialog box the solar settings are greyed out until i check shadows. shadows slow things down too much. any workarounds? the default sun is coming from the north. (which definitely never happens here in cleveland!)

[patricks]

What is the point of controlling solar location if there are no shadows present or visible?

[frankie right]

north face of building is dark, south face is bright. even without shadows.

[Alex Page]

Cant you turn on the shadows but up the suns intensity and 'down' the shadow to '0'?

[rmejia]

shadows slow things down too much. any workarounds?

Turn on Open GL

[frankie right]

open GL? what's that? i'm a beginner.

[Andre Carvalho]

If your graphic card supports OpenGL technology, you can check the option "Use OpenGL Hardware acceleration" under the Graphics tab when you go to the Options dialog box (you can find it under the "Settings menu").

However, if you graphic card doesn't support OpenGL, then you may have problems turning it on.

Andre Carvalho

[frankie right]

wonderful! my system supports it and things seem to be moving faster with shadows on. thanks. are there any drawbacks to having open GL on?

[Andre Carvalho]

No. As I said before, the only thing is that if your graphic card doesn't support it or even if your graphic card supports it but its drivers aren't updated with the latest version, you may notice weird things happening on your screen or messages saying that you have to close the view because there is a problem with it...

Andre Carvalho

[frankie right]

got ya. thanks.

[patricks]

north face of building is dark, south face is bright. even without shadows.

I'm confused.

In the northern hemisphere, the north side of the building is almost always in shadow, and the south side almost always has sun on it.

You can ignore that and set the sun angle directly in each view, like using the pre-set top-left or top-right sun angles. That's useful for when you want 45-deg. angle shadows to help give a sense of depth to the elevations.

But you said you don't want shadows. So you can turn the shadow setting down to 0, the shadows go away, and your north and south elevations look about the same as far as elevation goes. But then it becomes pretty much just the same as a shaded elevation with shadows turned off.