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Help centre · Visuals

Site and sun

Put your building on its real site, with a map, terrain and neighbours, then study its climate, sun, shadows and daylight.

Setting the site's location places your building in its real surroundings and gives it the right sun for any date and time. From there you can load its climate for early-design guidance, make shadow study sheets, map sun hours, check daylight in rooms over a day or a year, and match the model to a photo.

Set the location

Open Site from the side rail.

  1. Under Location, use Search an address or place, or type the Latitude and Longitude.
  2. Set True north, measured clockwise from plan up, so the sun and the plan's north arrow point the right way.
  3. If the address lands in the middle of the road, press Place building on the map, then click the spot where the building stands. Esc cancels.

To tie the model to real survey coordinates, see Map coordinates.

Show the context around the building

Under Context, choose what to show and the Context area around the building (200 to 1,000 metres square):

  • Map underlay: Satellite or Streets, laid on the ground at true scale, or None.
  • Terrain: the shape of the ground from elevation data. Level the building pad flattens the ground under the building and blends it into the slope.
  • Surrounding buildings: neighbours' massing from OpenStreetMap footprints and heights. Their roofs are drawn flat.

The context sits in a locked group, so you can't select or paint it by accident. Walk mode follows the terrain. Refresh site data fetches it again, and Remove site takes it away. The map credits show in the corner whenever site data is on screen.

Set the sun

Under Sun & shadows, turn on Sun for sunlight and shadows at this place and time. Then set:

  • the Date;
  • the Time of day;
  • the UTC offset for the site's time zone. Daylight saving isn't applied for you, so include it in the offset when it applies.

Press Play the day to sweep the sun from early morning to evening and watch the shadows move. Press Stop to end it. At night, the lamps in your model take over; see Rendering.

Load the site's climate

Under Climate, press Load weather file and pick the site's EnergyPlus weather file (.epw): a typical year, hour by hour. Free files for thousands of places are at climate.onebuilding.org; choose the station nearest the site. The weather is kept with the project, and the panel warns you if the file is more than 50 km from the site.

You then see:

  • the Climate type, from cold to hot and humid;
  • Degree days for heating and cooling (base 18 °C), and how much days and nights differ;
  • the share of hours that are Comfortable (18–26 °C), and the sun and sky on the ground in a year;
  • a chart of each month's daily highs and lows, and a wind rose of where the wind comes from.

Design guidance

Below them, rules of thumb for the climate, in the manner of SketchUp's PreDesign: which way to face the building and its main glass, how much glass on each side, how deep an overhang shades the sunny side at midsummer, and whether thermal mass, cross-ventilation and insulation pay. Press Compare the model's glass to see how the windows you've drawn measure up: a tick where they match the advice, and a warning where they don't.

It's a starting point for massing and glazing, not an energy model.

Make a shadow study sheet

In Sheets, press New shadow study: the building from above on the equinox and solstices. You get a sheet of the building seen from above, plan north up, at 09:00, 12:00 and 15:00 on the equinox, midsummer and midwinter. Each picture is lit by the sun at the site for that date and hour. It's an ordinary sheet, so it follows the model and exports to PDF with the set. It needs the site's location. See Sheets.

Map sun hours

Under Sunlight & daylight → Sun hours:

  1. Pick a Day to map: the equinox, midsummer, midwinter or the sun's current date.
  2. Press Map sun hours.

A coloured map covers the ground and roofs around the building, from blue (no sun) to orange (sun all day). The panel shows the share of the ground and roofs with 2 hours of sun or more, and lists Sun on the windows (least first) with each window's facing and hours. Clear removes the map. It needs the site's location.

Check daylight in rooms

Press Check daylight to test the rooms on the active level under an overcast sky. No location is needed. For each room you get its average daylight factor (ADF) against the usual Target for its name, and the share of the room that Sees sky at desk height. View from above looks down on the map with the other levels hidden.

If you change the model afterwards, the panel says so; run the check again to update it.

See a year of daylight

With the site's weather file loaded, Year of daylight works through the year, hour by hour from 8:00 to 18:00, for the rooms on the active level. It gives the two measures LEED v4 and IES LM-83 use:

  • sDA 300/50% (spatial daylight autonomy): the share of the floor with at least 300 lux for half the hours. LEED looks for 55%, or 75% for more points.
  • ASE 1000/250 (annual sunlight exposure): the share of the floor with direct sun over 1000 lux for more than 250 hours, a sign of glare and overheating. LEED looks for 10% or less.

The map shows each point's share of the hours with 300 lux. Blinds aren't modelled, so rooms with a lot of sun read high on both.

Match a photo of the site

Choose Views → Match a photo… and pick a photo.

  1. Drag the two red lines along east–west edges of the building in the photo, and the two green lines along north–south edges.
  2. Drag the Origin square onto the model's origin.
  3. Set the Camera height.

The model lines up as you drag. If it faces the wrong way, use Turn the model half round. Press Done to save a view that shows the photo over the model, at the strength you set with How strongly the photo shows.

Photo behind the model

To see the model in the photo, as SketchUp shows it, put the photo behind: tap the behind the model button in the Match photo bar, or, with the view open, choose Views → Photo behind the model. The model is drawn over the photo, and the photo shows wherever there's no model, such as the sky and the street.

Images exported from the view (Export image…, fast) carry the photo as it shows: behind the model, or over it at its strength.

Paint the model with the photo

With the view open, select shapes, pushed and pulled solids or models you've brought in, and choose Views → Project the photo onto the selection. Their faces take the photo where the camera saw them, as SketchUp's Project Photo does, for a building's façade modelled from the photo. Walls, floors and roofs take finishes instead (see Materials and finishes).

Still stuck? Contact us, or ask in the app: Help → Contact support.