Design Software

Simply Rad

Good morning everyone. Hope all are staying healthy and productive during these strange times
I live in the mountains of Colorado and its boom town!!!!!
I have using Uponor Design Suite for years. Most importantly, I have designed and installed 100 systems and they all work well because of this program. I really like it because of the ability to perform the heat loss and radiant design all in one. I have become very efficient while using it and I have learned a lot from adjusting all types of the design variables such as loops lengths, water temps, tube spacing, insulation etc, I have become lazy and haven't tried another program for heat loss. I do use SIggy's HDS 1.13 software for system designs.
I recently found out the Uponor design program is not being supported anymore and I am now forced into finding a new heat loss/radiant design program. What programs are you guys using and like. Thanks for you help. Regards Jeffrey

hot_rod

LoopCAD seems to be a favorite

Steve Minnich

Uponor spoiled us. Powerful, accurate, user-friendly FREE software. I know I miss it. 

Paul Pollets

I'm in the same position. Heat Cad and Loop Cad are both made by Avenir, who did the original ADS software. It's offered on a 30 day trial for free, than it's $1200. for the software. They offer tutorials, but it's not very user friendly.

GGross

i believe there is a free version of loopcad, or at the very least it is very inexpensive. That version will only do heat load and radiant design, it will not generate a cooling load, and it is all spreadsheet based like the old ADS software.

Personally I jumped at having a reason to change to the full version of loopcad, it is a bit pricey but I think it's just great. i especially like being able to take a PDF print of a house and do almost all of my work from that, and some contractors really like the loop drawings (some really hate that I send it to them lol). I have been using it for about 3 years, several hundred completed projects and saved me countless trips back and forth to the print shop. I really can't say enough nice things about it. I do wish it had a few more modules available, something to draw forced air systems would be nice but it looks like you need to get wrightsoft for that.

Edit: sorry didn't notice this thread was old, spammer brought it up as new

Erin Holohan Haskell

GGross said:

Edit: sorry didn't notice this thread was old, spammer brought it up as new

No worries. I removed the spam. We can add to this discussion. Thanks!