Scan Text File Format

This option exists to enable the data to be loaded into a spreadsheet or database and displayed as a graph etc. This file is produced by the Analyzer program from the loaded scan files (.AXF). You can not directly use an AXF file for transporting into Excel.

The format of the text file consists of five columns separated by commas. If you are loading into Excel with the Open command, you would first need to look for .TXT file types and then select a comma (,) as the separator character when prompted.

• The first column is the number for the month (1-12 = January - December).
• The second column is the day within the month (1-31).
• The third column is the day of the year (1-365).
• The fourth column is the time in minutes (so 120 = 2am or 720=12 noon 750=12.30pm).
• The fifth column is the percentage of overlap for that date/time (0-100%). If your scan uses a reference point rather than an area then the % value will always be 100.

So for example the following line in the file would represent 73% shade interference at 2.30pm on the 13th July.

7,13,194,870,73

Only data is included which has a percentage greater than 0. It is unlikely you will use all the columns for output (you may for example just use columns three and four to create a 2D representation of shadow duration across each day.

A smaller scanning interval will create a bigger file. A 60 minute interval will create a maximum of 20 entries for each day while a 5 minute interval will create a maximum of 240 entries (remember only the hours of 2am-10pm are used for scanning).

The day of the year is calculated using the presence of any leap year in force dependant upon the year of scan.