he sunPath component works. For example if you want to simulate the hours from 8 to 16 it means you want 8 hours from 8 to 9, from 9 to 10,.... from 15 to 16 (8 hours duration period) so you get from the sunPath component (using default timeStep 1) the 9 sun position/vectors 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 (in the image the yellow suns). The things is that if you ask for a smaller timeStep for example 3 = 20 mins then the additional sun position (in the image the orange suns) are added also after the time limit of h16 so probably when you don't want/need. I understand that when you input a time period there is the ambiguity if the hours are the just 9 (the 9 inputs) or the 8 hours included between pairs of hours, but I would make in a way that it is possible to chose if the extra timeStep after the last hour are added or not. Thank you for your comments.
…
uld be much better than Rhino at huge mesh collections. I'd personally try free Autodesk Meshmixer and ZBrush first but most designers are more familiar with rendering programs like Maya or 3DS Max. I'm not familiar enough with architecture to suggest a list as only Revit and Sketchup come to mind.
Looking more closely, CAD Exporter is only for 2D curves and points, how silly, and it requires baked geometry in a Rhino layer:
I could write a Python script to export an STL but that would be a large ascii format file instead of binary. Better to use OBJ to retain quad faces, too.
Ah, well, OBJ files are also ascii format when exported from Rhino, so it would be quite easy to make a script to export those directly to disk from Grasshopper. Here is one box, 10X10X20 in size, with quad faces:
# Rhino
o object_1v 10 10 20v 10 10 0v 10 0 20v 10 0 0v 0 10 20v 0 10 0v 0 0 20v 0 0 0f 5 7 3 1f 5 6 8 7f 3 7 8 4f 2 4 8 6f 5 1 2 6f 3 4 2 1
If I have time I'll make a little script to write such OBJ files unless you can find a native Grasshopper plugin for direct OBJ export in full 3D for meshes.…