Discover how to add realistic shadows to your elevation model using layers and transparency in your CAD software. Master the steps to ensure the shadows appear correctly in your final plots and renderings, enhancing the depth and realism of your architectural designs.
Key Insights
- The article outlines the process of adding shadows to an elevation model in CAD software. This involves creating a new layer called "A-Shadows", using polyline to draw the areas that would be in shadow based on a theoretical sun angle, and filling these areas with a solid hatch.
- To ensure the shadows do not obscure the building details, the hatch layer is moved behind the line work using the 'send to back' option. However, the shadows may appear too heavy in the initial plot preview.
- To rectify this, a transparency is applied to the shadow layer, with the value set around 70%. While the transparency may not initially appear in the plot preview, enabling 'plot transparency' in the plot settings and ensuring 'show hide transparency' is active should allow the shadows to appear as intended in the final plot.
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Let's go into our Elevation model and start adding some shadows. So here I am in the Elevation file. I'm going to go to the Home tab, go to Layers.
I will create a new layer that I'm going to call A-Shadows. I will make it my current layer, and I'm going to choose its color to be Color 255. Close the interface.
Now, how a lot of people will put shadows on buildings is they will pretend that the sun is over here, coming down at a 45 degree angle. So there would be shadows that are going under this eve. You can see that this area of the building is significantly recessed from this side of the Elevation.
So this entire area would be in shadow. The eves would be shading under here, and since this part of the building pops out, there would be shadows that are going on from this recess right here, and then once again the shadows would be under the eve. So what I'm going to do first is I'm going to say what's the distance from the corner here to the end of the fascia.
So I'll just use this line right here. So it's right around 22 inches. So I will draw a polyline from the end of the building down 22 inches, go perpendicular to the jam of the garage door.
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The garage door is recessed. I'm going to go down 2 inches, go perpendicular to the other jam, go up 2 inches. Again, ortho is on the entire time.
Perpendicular to the jam, go down 2 inches. Perpendicular, go up 2 inches. Go perpendicular to the edge of the building.
We're about ready to start tackling the area up here, which is recessed. So that entire area will be in shadow. I'm going to go perpendicular to the grade.
I will go to the end of the building right here. Again, this is where we have the pop out, and I want this to line up with the dot Y of the end or the intersection of here. It's saying X dot X at no change in there.
I'm going to go perpendicular to the jam of the window. I'm going to go down 2 inches, go perpendicular to the other jam of the window, go up 2 inches, go perpendicular to the building here. I'm going to go down to the ground, so I will say go to the end of the building right here.
I want the area right in here to be in shadow, so I'm going to say go to the dot X of the end of the fascia right here. It's asking for the dot Y. I'll say no change at. I'm going to go perpendicular back to my typical shadow line.
Perpendicular to the jam of the window, go down 2, perpendicular to the jam here, go up 2, perpendicular to the end of the building. I'm going to go up to the fascia end of here. I'm just going to follow this line all the way back to the beginning, and I can go C, enter for close.
Now we have the region here that we're going to be using for our shadowing. So control S to save. I want to fill this with a solid hatch.
I'm going to go to hatch. I will choose a solid hatch. I'm going to select this entity right here, and I'm going to be done.
Control S to save. Now you can see that the hatch is totally covering up the building. We have a couple of things we need to do.
One thing I want to do is I want to move the hatch so that it is behind the line work, so that the line work we have will dominate. So I'm going to go to modify, and there's an icon here for drawing order. I'm going to say send to back.
It's saying select objects. I'm going to do a crossing right there. So what I've now done is I have moved the hatch so that the hatch is behind the line work, so I will save the file.
Now, if I were to go in and to say plot, and if I were to say plot a window, and I'm just going to say fit it on the paper and preview, you can see that the line work does dominate, but the hatch is a pretty heavy line weight. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go into the layers interface.
I'm going to take the layer a shadow, and I'm going to give it a transparency. So I'm just going to expand this a little bit to the right so you can see transparency. The transparency values range from 0 to 90.
Zero meaning no transparency at all, 90% meaning 90% transparent. So I'm going to change our transparency to 70% and go okay, and close it. If I now go back into plot, and if I do my previous plot, preview it, you see that there's not any change.
That's because we have assigned transparency, but we have not said turn transparency on. So there's an icon right here that is saying show hide transparency. If I choose show hide transparency, did you see a change on the screen? I'm going to turn it off, and I will turn it back on.
I will go back into plot, and I will choose previous plot, and once again preview. You can see that our shadows are still a heavy line weight. Now granted, we did take the shadows and we forced them to the background.
We set in the drawing to make the shadows layer transparent. We also turned on transparency, but it's not showing up yet. So I'm going to hit escape, but look over here on the right.
There is yet another check mark that says plot transparency. If now again I go preview, you can see that the shadows are themselves transparent. So I'm just going to hit escape, and just cancel the plotting.
But what you can see is that when we're using transparency, and when we want to use it for plotting, we have to turn transparency on, and we also have to make sure that in our plotting settings we're saying plot with transparency. So I'm going to save the file. I'm going to go back into our title sheet, reload the xref, and once again save the file.
Now, if we were to say plot this sheet, and if I go preview, you can see that in this drawing the shadows are once again solid. So what we need to do is we need to go on and make sure we have plot transparency turned on, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to apply this setting change to this layout. So I'm now going to preview it, and you can now see that I have my shadows being displayed.
If you would please get caught up with the shadows, and then what we're going to do next is we're going to be bringing a background image in, and get a little bit more detailing on our elevation rendering.
