ArborShadow R4 - Limitations
The ArborShadow R4 program has a number of limitations which any potential purchaser should be aware of and understand. The shadow graphic display calculation method employed within ArborShadow has been developed to maintain a reasonable level of graphic display speed but at the same time retain an acceptable level of accuracy.
Shadow calculations assume that:
The graphic output of the shadow display:
Accuracy:
Other Limitations:
Shadow calculations assume that:
- The ground is perfectly flat.
- The tree is perfectly straight.
- The tree canopy shape is perfectly linear between the 4 upper and lower defined crown axis dimensions.
The graphic output of the shadow display:
- Does not consider obstacles such as houses etc which may be present on a plan (so the shadow is displayed on the top of such obstacles).
- Clips shadows at a distance of 100m on an east-west axis (as measured from the tree centre).
Accuracy:
- Tree shadows and overlap calculations (using defined areas) work to a general accuracy of +/- 250mm (on the east-west axis) per every 1mm of distance on the north-south axis.
- All scanning of areas and point reference objects are limited to a distance of 100m from the tree centre.
Other Limitations:
- ArborShadow will currently only work with northern latitudes, this limitation I hope will be rectified soon once I have time to flip the graphics around!
- Analysis processing can be slow (although this does relate to your hardware specification, number of trees, etc).
- ArborShadow requires MS Windows (preferably 7, 8, 8.1 or 10). It will NOT work on RT based laptops or tablets. It is NOT available for the MAC although I have been informed that the generated AutoCAD scripts produced by a windows tablet will load into AutoCAD running on a MAC.
- Currently no printing facilities or Undo functions are included. Printing of data would be carried out by the target program used from export such as AutoCAD, Excel, Notepad etc.
- ArborShadow should work with all AutoCAD versions from R14. However, prior to purchase it is essential that you test the script CAD export function with the supplied demo file to ensure CAD plotting is functional.
- No information is available with regards to minimum memory requirements on Windows hardware. Test the software loads and runs and can handle a reasonably large database prior to purchase.
- It is good practice to prepare a DXF (with AutoCAD or similar) prior to loading by first switching off any unnecessary layers, erasing any sections of the drawing which are unnecessary and erasing the paperspace data. Finally explode any blocks. Having a properly prepared DXF will reduce memory usage and improve display performance. SPLINES are not yet implemented within this program. NESTED BLOCKS - Blocks are only exploded to 2 levels. DIMENSIONS, REGIONS ETC - Are considered trivial for our purposes so are ignored.
- Only Solid hatches are able to be exported as a DXF file.
