Shadow Analysis - Stuck!

ChaseNorris

Hello,

This all started because I used the sun shadow volume tool, but I didn't like how the shadow enveloped the buildings. I want to the be able to see the buildings separate from their shadow.

I'm trying to recreate the type of analysis seen here. I downloaded the tutorial, but when I looked at the Skyline parameters, the box it says to check under Surface Options, "Use Refraction," is grayed out so that I can't check it. Since the point is to create silhouettes instead of a skyline, I checked the box "Create Silhouettes" under Skyline Options instead. I left everything else alone and clicked apply and ok. I validated the model and ran it, getting the following error:

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Executing (Create Sun Skymap): SunSkymap Buildings "(UTC-6:00) Central Time (US & Canada), Central America, Guadalajara, Mexico City" "3/21/2010 11:00:00 AM" # # # # # "C:\Users\Chase\Desktop\Shadows\Maps and GDBs\Shadows.gdb\Buildings_Sun" 7500 0
Start Time: Sun Jun 15 08:49:36 2014
Running script SunSkymap...

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Chase\Desktop\Shadows\Maps and GDBs\Sun_tools\ClassSunSkyMap.py", line 15, in <module>
    import arcpy, ephem
  File "C:\Users\Chase\Desktop\Shadows\Maps and GDBs\Sun_tools\ephem\__init__.py", line 5, in <module>
    import ephem._libastro as _libastro
  File "C:\Users\Chase\Desktop\Shadows\Maps and GDBs\Sun_tools\ephem\_libastro.py", line 1
SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x90' in file C:\Users\Chase\Desktop\Shadows\Maps and GDBs\Sun_tools\ephem\_libastro.py on line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details

Failed to execute (Create Sun Skymap).
Failed at Sun Jun 15 08:49:38 2014 (Elapsed Time: 2.00 seconds)

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Does anyone know why this is happening? I downloaded Python 2.6 as well as PyEphem.

Khalid

Hi Chase,

Please try the sun skymap tool available with 3D Samples to generate the output points and let me know if you have any other issues:

http://links.esri.com/3dsamples

It has been updated to no longer require PyEphem, and resolves a few bugs with the old tool. 

Regards,

Khalid