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HVAC Design Studio

From floor plan to cooling load in an afternoon.

Open your DWG or DXF drawing. The app finds the rooms, walls and glass, then works out the cooling and heating load for every room. You review. It does the take-off.

Download for macOS See how it works

Version 0.4.2 · macOS and Windows · Licence key required

HVAC Design Studio showing a floor plan with seven colour-coded rooms, the room list on the left and the properties of the Open Office room on the right.
A real screen from the app: seven rooms detected on a sample office drawing.

Built on the references your reviewers already ask for

  • ISHRAE 2017

    Design weather, nearest station to your city

  • ASHRAE 62.1

    Fresh air per person and per area

  • ECSBC 2024

    Hourly occupancy, lighting and equipment

  • SI and IP

    kW or TR, L/s or CFM, switch any time

Standards and data sources the calculation uses. HVAC Design Studio is not affiliated with or endorsed by these bodies.

The take-off is the slow part. So the drawing does it.

Rooms, found for you

Auto-detect finds every enclosed space on your wall layers. Nothing becomes a room until you accept it.

Walls and glass, by direction

Exterior walls are told apart from partitions, and every window is measured and given its compass direction. Net wall and glass areas are ready before you ask.

Every hour of the year

For each room, the search runs all 12 months and all 24 hours and keeps the worst one. The weather comes from the station nearest your city.

A calculation you can defend

Double-click any room to see each step of its load. Every card shows the formula, the table it came from and the numbers that went in.

Revisions without rework

When the architect issues a new drawing, Update Floor shows what changed, room by room. The rooms you already checked stay checked.

Reports ready to hand over

Export to Excel or CSV with subtotals for each floor and group. The Facade Summary lists fresh air, wall and glass areas by direction for every room.

hours searched for every room
288
space types with built-in densities
80
hourly schedules included
50
design days compared for every room
2

Four steps. One afternoon.

Step 1 · Detect

Open the drawing. Get the rooms.

Say once which layers hold walls, windows and doors. Press Detect Rooms, and every enclosed space is listed with its area for you to accept or reject.

  • Names and seat counts are read from the drawing's own labels.
  • Size filters and exclusion zones keep shafts and voids out.
  • Draw or reshape any room by hand. It snaps to the drawing.
The Auto-Detect Rooms screen listing nine detected spaces with their areas, the open office highlighted on the floor plan.

Step 2 · Calculate

See why, not just how much.

Pick a city and press Calculate. Then double-click a room. The Explain pane walks through its load in the order the engine works, from wall conduction to the coil.

  • Twelve month bars and a 24-hour profile show where the peak falls.
  • The hottest day and the most humid day are both run. You see which one governs.
  • Heating load, humidification and a heating airflow check, when you switch them on.
The load calculation screen: design settings on the left, the cooling load table in the centre and the Explain pane on the right with a month-by-month peak chart for the Open Office.

Step 3 · Size

Size the plant for the hour it really sees.

Rooms peak at different hours. Give them schedules, and the app adds every room hour by hour. You get the coincident peak beside the plain sum of room peaks.

  • Reported for the building, each floor and each room group.
  • Fifty schedules compiled from ECSBC 2024, or build your own.
  • Keep several named configurations and compare them on the same building.
The Coincident peak tab comparing the sum of room peaks with the coincident peak for the floor and for each room group.

Step 4 · Revise

Revision B arrives. Your work stays.

Point Update Floor at the new drawing. The old and new plans sit side by side, with added, removed and moved walls, doors and windows marked in colour.

  • Each changed room says what is different, in plain words.
  • Choose Re-fit, Keep or Edit for each room.
  • Nothing changes until you press Apply.
The Update Floor review: a list of changed rooms on the left, the current drawing and the new drawing side by side with a new wing outlined in green.

The same answer. Without the tape measure.

The usual wayMeasure each room off the drawing and type the areas into a sheet.
With HVAC Design StudioRooms are detected from the wall layers, with area and perimeter worked out.
Add up wall and glass areas for each compass direction by hand.
Every wall and window carries its direction and its net area.
Pick one design month and hour and hope it is the worst.
All 288 month and hour combinations are searched for every room.
A number in a cell that nobody can trace.
Each load opens into its formula, source table and inputs.
A revised drawing means measuring again from the start.
Update Floor shows only what changed and keeps the rest.

  • Multi-floor buildings

    Mark several floors on one sheet, and let a typical floor count as many storeys.

  • Coil selection per room

    Apparatus dew point, supply air quantity and bypass factor, worked out from the room's own loads.

  • Glass in bands

    One window preset can carry daylight and vision glass with separate values.

  • A guide inside the app

    Every setting is explained in plain words, with the formula behind it.

Try it on a live project first.

One plan, billed yearly. Before you buy, run a pilot on your own drawing and put the load sheet beside the one you make today.

Pilot

Free for two weeks

For a team that wants to check the numbers before deciding.

  • The full app, every feature
  • One of your own live projects
  • Help setting up your first drawing
  • Your load sheet to keep
Request a pilot

For everyday work

Annual licence

₹30,000.00 per seat, billed yearly

For engineers who size systems every week. Buy online, or contact us for a larger team.

  • Cooling and heating loads, no project limit
  • Excel, CSV and Facade Summary exports
  • macOS and Windows
  • Move a seat to another computer yourself
  • Activation without internet, by file
Buy a licence

Questions, answered.

Which drawings can it open?

DXF files open directly. DWG files are converted first by a free DWG converter that you install once. Any drawing with walls on their own layers will work; you tell the app which layers mean what.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Every calculation runs on your own computer. The app checks its licence online from time to time, and tells you well before the next check is due. For a computer that never goes online, you can activate by exchanging a file with us.

Where is my data stored?

On your computer. A project is a single file saved next to your drawing. Your drawings and results are not uploaded anywhere; the only thing the app sends is the licence check.

Which method does it use?

The table-based method design engineers already use: equivalent temperature differences for walls and roofs, solar gain through glass by direction, internal gains, fresh air and a psychrometric coil selection. It is built for sizing at design stage. It is not an hourly energy simulation.

Is there a Linux version? What about Apple silicon?

Today there are builds for Windows (64-bit) and macOS. Macs with Apple silicon run the macOS build through Rosetta 2. There is no Linux build yet.

Can I work in TR and CFM?

Yes. Switch between SI and IP at any time, or mix them unit by unit. Switching only changes how values are shown, never what is stored.

Give the take-off back to the drawing.

Version 0.4.2. Runs with a licence key.

Download for macOS Download for Windows

macOS build runs on Intel and, through Rosetta 2, on Apple silicon · Windows 64-bit No key yet? Request a pilot.