Solar Time Stamp

You can display the current Solar Time and Date information while rendering a view. When used in conjunction with the Solar Study utility, or in an animation, you can display the Solar Time and Date information for each frame of the sequence. To display solar time and date in your rendered view, you first place the cell “SLRTIM” in a convenient place in the view being rendered. This cell is located in the cell library “animator.cel” in the “Workspace\system\cell” directory. After placing the cell, you can edit the Enter-Data field of the cell to display the string you want. The format of the string is that used by the C function “strftime”. By default, the cell contains the string “%c”, which displays the Date and Time.

Some of the more popular formats are:

Format	Description
%c	Date and time appropriate for current locale
%x	Date for current locale
%X	Time for current locale
%y	Year without century (00 — 99)
%Y	Year with century (such as, 2001)
%b	Abbreviated month name
%B	Full month name
%m	Month as number (01 — 12)
%d	Day of month as number (01 — 31)
%a	Abbreviated day name
%A	Full day name
%H	Hour in 24–hour format (00 — 23)
%I	Hour in 12–hour format (01 — 12)
%M	Minute as number (00 — 59)
%S	Second as number (00 — 59)
%p	Current locale's AM/PM indicator for 12–hour clock
%z, %Z	Time-zone name or abbreviation; no characters if time zone is unknown

Typical examples are:

String	Displays
%c	04/18/01, 2001, 10:13:45 AM
Date is %c	Date is 04/18/01, 2001, 10:13:45 AM
Time is %I:%M %p	Time is 10:15 AM

Each time the view is rendered, the format string will be replaced with information based on the current Solar Time and Date. If an animation is being recorded, the string will be updated to reflect the Solar Time and Date for each frame of the animation. Only the string in the Enter-Data field is used for display in the rendered image. The string “Solar Time:”, in the cell, is for reference only and will not be displayed. Text attributes are taken from the existing text item in the cell.

After the SLRTIM cell is placed, the origin of the cell is used as the reference point for the time/date text. In other words, the text is justified relative to the placement location. For example, if the justification of text is CENTER, the text is centered about that point; if the justification is LEFT, the left edge of the text is at that point. When the view is rendered, the entire string is replaced and justified relative to the placement location of the cell. After the cell is placed, you can change any of the text attributes (with the Change Text Attributes tool), including size, font, and justification.