Godwit

What it does

Godwit designs sundials you can really build: a garden dial on a pedestal, a dial for any wall, a reclining, equatorial or polar dial, or an analemmatic dial on the ground where a person is the gnomon. Choose the place, set the dial's direction and size, and Godwit draws every hour line for that spot. Then print it at true size or send it to a laser cutter, CNC router or engraver.

Any dial, any place

• Six kinds of dial: horizontal, wall (facing any direction), reclining, equatorial, polar and analemmatic, all from one shadow model checked against the textbook formulas.
• Any place. An offline list of the world's cities, or any latitude and longitude, north or south of the equator.
• Clock time. Lines every hour, half hour, 20, 15 or 10 minutes, corrected for longitude so the dial follows your clock, with summer-time numerals if you like.
• No compass needed. Find a wall's direction from the time sunlight reaches or leaves it.

Dates on the dial

• Solstice and equinox lines, or a line for every month.
• Your own dates: a birthday or a wedding day, where the tip of the shadow runs along the line every year.
• The analemma, the figure of eight at noon or at every hour, and the equation of time table.

See the shadow

Watch the gnomon's shadow on the face for any day and time, or follow it live. The 3D view shows the dial on its pedestal or wall with the Sun where it really is, and what the dial reads compared with the clock.

Make it

• True-size PDF on A4 or Letter pages, with glue strips, page labels and a 100 mm check line.
• SVG and DXF in millimetres for laser, CNC, vinyl and stone engraving: lines on their own layers, numerals as text.
• The gnomon template at the right angle, for any gnomon thickness.
• A setting-up guide: levelling, true north at solar noon, the wall's direction and the equation of time.
• A picture of the face, and your design as a .godwit file to open on another device.

Free, and one purchase

Free: horizontal dials and walls facing due south or north, hour lines for any place, the shadow and 3D views, picture export and three saved designs.

Godwit Unlock, bought once for USD 9.99 (or your local price), adds reclining, equatorial, polar and analemmatic dials, walls facing any direction, date lines, your own dates and analemmas, the true-size PDF, SVG, DXF and gnomon template, and unlimited designs. No subscription, no ads.

Private

No account, no tracking, no network. Your designs stay on your device, in files you can export and share yourself.