How does D5 know which direction is north?

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1

I am using SketchUp and I am trying to orient my model for sun and shadows. I know you can add the longitude and latitude of your site, but how does D5 know if the SketchUp model is oriented correctly? Hopefully this makes sense.

Thanks

2

Hi mate, we can not distinguish the north in D5, the only thing you can do is add the longitude and latitude of your site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

After you have set the latitude, longitude, and date in D5, sliding the time slider will bring up an exact sun track. The function of “north offset” in D5 is to change the default north position of your model by modifying this value after you determine the geographic location of the project as well as the date and time.

So it is recommended to make sure the north-south orientation of your model is correct before you import it into D5.

By the way, I remember there is a plugin in Sketchup to orient the north, you can try it.

3

Then how does it know which way to cast the shadow? Sorry, still new to rendering softwares.

4

After you have set the latitude, longitude, and date in D5, sliding the time slider will bring up an exact sun track. The function of “north offset” in D5 is to change the default north position of your model by modifying this value after you determine the geographic location of the project as well as the date and time.

So it is recommended to make sure the north-south orientation of your model is correct before you import it into D5.

5

ah okay makes sense thank you

6

D5 doesn’t really “detect” north from the model automatically - it mainly uses the Geo & Sky settings plus the North Offset value to simulate the sun path. I usually make sure the model is already aligned correctly in SketchUp before importing, then fine-tune it with North Offset if the shadows look off. The official replies in older threads mention basically the same thing.
One small thing that helped me was checking the orientation with an online compass before setting up the sun study. I’ve used 123Compass a couple of times just to quickly verify north direction while matching site plans and shadow angles.