The use of APL.68000 access to the Macintosh quickdraw system for the productio n of shadows cast by buildings

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the considerations involved in predicting the shapes of shadows cast by buildings for any hour, day or month of the year and for any location on Earth. The power of APL is demonstrated in the general solutions possible for the problem irrespective of the shape of the building provided that it is composed of regular cylinders or prisms. Direct access to the Macintosh Quickdraw functions allows the production of graphical output of high resolution and using any of the available printing fonts. The system described makes use of Macintosh menus and dialogue boxes for data input and workflow control. The result is a system with an appearance similar to other Macintosh applications, such as, MacWrite, Word or MacDraw and the user is unaware of the presence of APL.

REFERENCES

• 1: MicroAPL (1986). APL.68000 for the Apple Macintosh, MicroAPL Ltd.
• 2: Spencer, J.W. (1965) Calculation of solar position for building purposes. Division of Building Research Technical Paper No. 14. CSIRO, Melbourne.
• 3: Spencer, J.W. (1971). Fourier series representmon of the position of the sun in Search, 2,5 p172

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.4 Graphics Utilities
          Subjects: Graphics packages

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: APL

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism
          Subjects: Color, shading, shadowing, and texture

  J. Computer Applications
  J.2 PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING
      Subjects: Engineering

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.8 PERSONAL COMPUTING

      Nouns: Apple

General Terms:
Languages