The
Sundial Primer created by Carl Sabanski |
"Dialling Guides" - Analemmatic Sundial (Human Sundial) The purpose of the "Dialling Guides" is to provide an easy method for laying out the hour lines for a number of analemmatic sundials located at various latitudes in either the Northern or Southern Hemispheres. The analemmatic sundials presented here are designed to be used as "human sundials". The sundial is also known as an interactive sundial, sundial of human involvement or sun clock. Figure 1 is an illustration of a typical "Dialling Guide". It is designed to show local apparent or solar time. Figure 1: "Dialling Guide" (CAD) There are a total of 81 "Dialling Guides" that cover the range of latitudes from 25° to 65° inclusive in increments of 0.5°. Each "Dialling Guide" illustrates how to lay out the hour points in minimum time increments of 5 minutes and the Date Scales for four sundials. As the sundials are intended for people there is information available to construct sundials with east-west widths of 2, 3, 4 and 5 metres. To obtain the design information for your "human sundial" just find a "Dialling Guide" close to your latitude in the following table and you will be good to go. Don't forget the instructions.
If you see what might be a problem with any of the "Dialling Guides" please let me know. Thank you. Happy Dialling! If you are interested in a custom "Dialling Guide" designed for your particular location or one that has the hour lines corrected for longitude, we can help you. Custom
"Human Sundial Dialling Guides" If you are planning to build a human sundial and locate it on a paved area, you can paint the hour numbers and date scale. The numbers can also be used if you are building an interactive horizontal shadow plane sundial. The following templates are available as pdf files when you request "The Sundial Primer on CD". The numbers are 10 inches high, the letters 6 inches and the text 3 inches. Each number, letter and month text is on a separate 8-1/2" by 11" sheet of paper. You can vary the size when printing by adjusting the print scale. The template is made by cutting out the image using a craft knife. This font is also available as a dxf file just like the many offered below but only on "The Sundial Primer on CD".
Also, only available on the CD, you will find dxf files of the following fonts. These can be imported into CAD software where you can scale them to any size. Then find a metal supply business that has a plasma or laser cutter and you can get the images cut out of thin sheet steel. Paint and set the images into concrete blocks of any shape and size that you can make. If you place a boundary around the image you can get both positive and negative cut outs. These
are not true fonts but have been converted into lines to make them more
usable. For example, you can easily adjust the spacing between the letters
to suit your needs. Don't worry if the fonts look a little fuzzy here.
That's only because of the low resolution of the images. They are perfect
in the dxf files. If you are interested in seeing more font templates that are available come on in. More Font Templates These templates are only available on "The Sundial Primer on CD". AND THAT'S NOT ALL!
The CD also contains an instruction set that will guide you through the
process of importing the dxf file, resizing the fonts and printing them
using DeltaCad. For more information on DeltaCad go to "The Sundial
Primer" and visit the "Computer Aided Dialling (CAD)" page.
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