ArchSite Compass

[furti]

Hi

I played around a bit and now the ArchSite has a Compass. I found it useful to see how the site is oriented.


The Compass can be enabled or disabled

Site_Compass.png (16.82 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

It can be rotated relative to the site (Maybe you don't want to rotate the site to Point to North)

Site_Compass_Rotated.png (14.67 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

And it will also rotate when the site is rotated

Site_Compass_SiteRotated.png (13.61 KiB) Viewed 2711 times

What do you think about it?

[regis]

pretty cool stuff, revit has a project north and a true north. So project is the helpful to work with perpedicular and orthographic alignments of a site because working in weird angles is not so easy at times. And when it's time to print sheet, we assign it back to the true north which takes the real coordinates of the site and makes the drawing ready for print.

So wondering is there a way to create these 2 options? that is assuming you already have 90% figured out?

[paullee]

How and should the model be put in 'real coordinate / orientation' in FC had been an issue for me

Sounds a good approach ! Any idea about 'real coordinate'?

Need 'real coordinate / orientation', e.g. to put bldg in survey map / (model now ), simulation such as daylighting etc.

[regis]

Need 'real coordinate / orientation', e.g. to put bldg in survey map / (model now ), simulation such as daylighting etc.

Should be interesting if that can be achieved.

[yorik]

Great addition!

The way a BIM model should be "oriented" (basically a difference between the way it is in FreeCAD and the position on earth in the real world is a tricky subject.. Apps like revit do strange things in that regard where the position in the file is neither one nor the other

Note that Arch Sites have a declination property which should do the same as your angle property: indicate a difference between the true north and the model north. With the longitude and latitude, we have all we need to "place" the model correctly on earth (the (0,0,0) point of the model should be placed at those coordinates).

There are some complex things too in the IFC file format about geo-positioning, that I have been too lazy to read andtry to understand so far..

[paullee]

Noted ArchSite had some relevant properties, but because of absence of pysolar package in Fedora, I did not test the features

And I did not find a workflow to 'read the real coordinates' for the model by just setting those properties in ArchSite.

I attempted to move the whole model 'to real coordinate' - like I would have done by Xref or otherwise in AutoCad - to read some basic information for site setting-out works ... not very good though here.

Maybe somebody can do something?

[furti]

I'm not an expert. I only do Architecture for my personal Project. So I try to understand what a real Architect want to achieve. So please excuse when I say something totally silly throughout this thread

Lets say I have imported some Site data into FreeCAD like this (Not a real import. only create a quick Draft wire for the showcase)

Import_Houseplacement.png (11.38 KiB) Viewed 2585 times

The red rectangle might be the Position of the house and the Compass Points to the true North. Meaning when you look on the site on a map, this is where North is on the map. (I assume that model North is the positive Y Axis. Is this correct?)

Now the house is not ideal to draw because I can not use the grid or any horizontal constraints in a Sketch because the whole house is rotated against the global coordinate System.


So I would like to rotate the whole site, so that the house can be build easily.

Site_Rotated.png (14.19 KiB) Viewed 2585 times

Now we can see that the real North also rotated about 7 Degrees in this example. And the angle between the Positive Y axis and the Compass North is the declination angle.

So every time i rotate the site, I have to adjust the declination angle manually.

@yorik for me it would make sense to calculate the declination property based on the site Rotation and Compass roation properties. So I have to set the Compass Rotation once when I Import the Site geometry and when I rotate the whole Site the property will adjust accordingly. (But maybe I am wrong with my previous assumptions, then this might be complete nonsense )

And when it's time to print sheet, we assign it back to the true north which takes the real coordinates of the site and makes the drawing ready for print.

Maybe you can give me a example of what should happen when one switches between true north and model north

[regis]

basically you have the right idea from what I see there, so a true north when you import your info with real world real site coordinates and orientation of the house etc etc, and then probably have a way to Set the project north now, by having that declination you are showing. So some way to store that declination, and then it's just a matter a switching Project orientation between True north Project north for required purposes.

[furti]

Played around with it a bit. Now the Site has a property called "VisualizeTrueNorth" in the View Settings. Whe enabled the whole geometry will be rotated so that the true North Points to the positive Y axis.

This is only a visual thing. So no actual geometry is changed.
When enabled it is also not really possible to do any useful work with draft Tools as the snapping is also affected by the Transformation.
So I don't know how useful this might be.

True_North.gif (74.62 KiB) Viewed 2533 times

[furti]

And I also added a "Update Declination" property to the Compass Settings. When enabled the declination will be calculated based on the Compass and Sie Rotation automatically.