Not sure if I'm being dense because this is already a thing and I just don't know about it, but please could the Longitude, Latitude and North Orientation for the solar light be automatically aligned with the geographic coordinates of a file - if these are attached, or referenced in.
It seems absurd to go to the trouble of geo-locating a project to the degree-minute-second, and then have to do it again for rendering because there is no connection between the two. This possible has connections to the Solar Exposure calculator too?
Regards
Rob
Thanks for the input. I will have to check with development regarding the future inclusion of this enhancement request. The VUE engine will eventually replace the current engine used and may provide this functionality. Please file a Service Request to be updated on this enhancement
If you have a Geo-Coordinated design file it only takes a few steps to update the Light Manager solar information using Google Earth.
This also works without an attached GCS, but you will need to manually navigate Google Earth to your desired location before the shift-click..
Regards,Ron
Hi Ron, I thought I should try this as you have described - because I've still not had success connecting Google Earth to Microstation CE since my post in Nov 2018 https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_visualization/f/visualization-forum-1977638070/171264/solar-position-from-google-earth The way around this is (in v8i) was to start Google Earth independently, but even now I get the Windows UAC dialog asking if I want to "allow this app to make changes to my device" and then nothing happens. I change my UAC settings to Never notify, and still am not able to sync with Google Earth. All I get is "Wait Google Earth initializing..." Just curious, Ron - assuming this works for you, does it propagate the GMT Offset as well as Daylight Savings fields? If so, it must be using information from Google Earth to do so, because Microstation doesn't seem to have that information available.
Max
Regarding the UAC prompt there is an issue with the latest update of Google Earth 7.3.3
It is recommended to roll back to 7.3.2 to resolve this issue.
Hi Max,According to MicroStation it just send the Lat/Long from Google Earth to the Solar Lighting settings in the Light Manager. The GMT Offset and the Daylight Savings check box are not affected, so you'll need to adjust them appropriately.
David Trejo-Rodriguez said:It is recommended to roll back to 7.3.2 to resolve this issue.
Also be sure to install the 32-bit version because the 64-bit version won't work. This works for both V8i and CE.
FWIW, I also recommend keeping this 32-bit Google Earth installer available because Google Earth is tends to automatically update to the latest version. I haven't found an easy way to keep this from happening. Uninstall/reinstall seems to be the only solution.
Ron Jones said:The GMT Offset and the Daylight Savings check box are not affected, so you'll need to adjust them appropriately.
Thanks Ron - I hope this can be automated in future; as I said - every point on earth should have a fixed GMT offset and Daylight Savings on/ off attribute, so I would expect Bentley to include this information in their database. Going back to Robert's original post, all of this should be automatic if the geometry in the file is already geo-located. The only user-selected variable is the date of render (which would affect Daylight Savings on/off, but should do so automatically).
David, Uninstall/ reinstall Google Earth is obviously time consuming, and as I use Google Earth intensively for non-Microstation work I would like to keep the latest and greatest as my default app. I hope Microstation can keep up with Google Earth's current and future releases.