DialMaker: A sundial design program

Ever dreamt of an ornamental sundial in your garden? or a sundial on the wall of your house? You could design your own… if you know how. In fact, the position of the hour lines on a sundial depends on a number of parameters, including the latitude of the site, the type of sundial (horizontal or vertical), the orientation of the receiving surface (for a vertical dial, equator-facing or not), and whether the sundial has to work in solar or in standard time.

With DIALMAKER, the layout of the hour lines is easy! Specify the parameters of the sundial, and the program does the rest. It will even let you graphically resize the dial, and it will dynamically reposition the hour lines! DIALMAKER can be used to design horizontal, vertical equator-facing and vertical declining dials. It gives a choice of rectangular or oval shapes, arabic or roman numbers, and many other options. DIALMAKER creates dials working either in solar time or in standard time.

DIALMAKER automatically positions the hour lines for any location in the world, and plots both the plate of the dial and the shape of the gnomon (raised part). The program also optionally superimposes a reference grid on the design so that it can be transferred to a more permanent medium such as wood or stone.

Examples

Click on the following to see examples of sundials designed with DIALMAKER for Windows:

Example 1. a horizontal sundial for New York, NY (USA).

Example 2. the same horizontal sundial, but designed for Iqaluit, NWT (Canada) in the Northern Arctic.

Example 3. a vertical, equator-facing sundial for Paris, France.

Example 4. a vertical, off-equator (declining) sundial for Perth, Australia.

Credits

The original idea of this program was provided by Dr. Alfred Brunger, now at Bodycote.

System requirements

IBM-PC or compatible computer, running Microsoft Windows Windows 95 or later. Hard disk space required: around 500 KB.

Licensing conditions

DIALMAKER is freeware. See detailed licensing conditions in the readme.txt file inside the download file.

Installation instructions

Download the dialmkr.zip file from the link below and expand the two files (setup.exe and setup.msi) to a temporary directory or to the desktop. Then run setup to install the program.

Download the program

Comments or questions?

Please send us your comments or questions at: