Facade panels perpendicular to sun vector

I am currently working on a façade with solar panels.

To get the biggest energy yield from the sun, the panels have to 'face' the sun.

The panels are moving when the vector moves.

The panels only have to rotate in the horizontal direction.

The panels have a diamond shape (so they do not block the sun for other panels), have to be perpendicular to the suns vector.

I was trying to do it with origins and planes but it does not work.

Does anyone know how I can do this?

I attached 2 pictures of how I want the script to work.

Hope someone can help me!

Thanks!

Henk

Attachments:

FullSizeRender (1).jpg, 53 KB
FullSizeRender.jpg, 85 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 1, 2015 at 3:06pm

Well they can't be truly perpendicular if you only allow rotation along one axis. In that case they can be at most perpendicular in a 2D slice of the 3D space. It probably makes sense to pick this 2D slice as being the central symmetry plane of each panel.

I attached a file which measures the sun angle in the symmetry plane of each facade panel, then rotates around the top edge with an angle limit to prevent rotation less than zero and more than 90 degrees.

Attachments:

responsive facade.gh, 13 KB

Permalink Reply by Henk_88 on April 1, 2015 at 3:53pm

Thanks a lot!

The tower itself is rotating as a whole towards the sun, one part of the façade is always facing the sun.

So you can see it as a 2D-slice.

You used rectangular forms in the example, is it possible to make it with a diamond form?

Thanks in advance!

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 3, 2015 at 3:42am

Sure, you can use whatever form you want, all that matters is the vector angle between the sun and the panel and the rotation axis.

Permalink Reply by nikos tzar on April 3, 2015 at 11:00am

Permalink Reply by Henk_88 on April 9, 2015 at 3:23am

Hi David,

I have been trying to get the result I want with the diamond forms.

Only it is not working yet. I attached my script and rhinofile.

The façade with the solar panels is rotating and so always facing the sun, this works so far.

Now I want to let the "diamond objects" face the sun perpendicular. This is currently not working. I tried different things to let it work, but it doesn't.

maybe you can help me solve this problem?

Thanks in advance!

Permalink Reply by h on October 17, 2015 at 5:46am

does it possible to use real sun vector? I tried it with Heliotrope but could not manage. what I need is to make pneumatic modules according to the sun vector and colour them according to this. And it seems it does not effected by month or day change. Thanks in advance.

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