The clock design must be printed or plotted in order to apply it to a constructed sundial.
The program supports the following output methods:
DIRECT PRINTING
This version of Sunwatch3D supports printed output of the clock at full scale to any printer configured in Windows. The hour lines, figures and a decorative background can be printed. Up to a size of 1.2 meters (4 feet) the lines, figures and background will be printed. For clocks larger than this size and up to 8.2 meters (27 feet) the program will only print the lines for the clock, not any background. These limits are large enough for most sundials. If a larger clock is required, a DXF export file can be used with a wide format plotter.
EXPORT TO DXF
The program can generate complete output in DXF format. This file type is the current standard of exchange of information for most vector based drawing software programs.
The drawing software that is suggested is AutoCAD(C).
The DXF file has a defined scale so that one drawing unit corresponds to 1mm. This should be noted when plotting the design, to avoid distortion due to scale changes. Make sure that the drawing scale is fixed at 1 drawing unit = 1 mm.
Export to a DXF file has one limitation; because output is in vector format, images can not be supported. For example, a background and zodiac symbols can not be
exported.
