Plandroid - Graphical Air Conditioning Design and Quoting Software
Plandroid Help Documentation
The menu item Tools -> Options launches the Options dialog box. Here you can control many settings to fine tune how you would like Plandroid to work for you. There is an Options tab corresponding to each Plandroid page, plus a tab for the air flow and duct sizing options.
General Options
General options
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In the General options page, you can set your preferred system of units for the Design tab ruler, the power calculations and the air flow display. The ruler units are also the length units used for reporting properties such as duct lengths and outlet face flow velocities (when you right click on a part and select Properties). The power units and air flow units determine the units shown in the status bar and in any report tables you are using, as well as flow properties.
The Automatic Updates Configure Updates button launches a dialog where you can specify how frequently you wish the program to automatically check for updates, and other update options. (You can check for updates immediately using the menu item Help -> Check for Updates).
The Application Data Set Directory lets you manually set the location of the program's application data, which includes the catalog files you are using, your report templates, your customer database, and other information. This can be useful if you want to store your application data on a remote server, for example, or in a common location that is regularly backed up. Use this option with some care, however, as if you set it to an incorrect location the program will not be able to find the data it needs and you can stop the program from working correctly.
In the Save files panel you can set how you would like Plandroid to save its native files. Each design may be built on one or more plan image files, plus a report template file. These may be large files, so you can choose if you would like to embed them in the Plandroid save file or not. If you embed them, all the information needed to restore the state of the program will be in the save file. This is very useful if you intend to send your Plandroid save file to someone else, for example, but can result in very large files. If you prefer to keep your save files small, then you can instead include links to your floor plan images or unedited report templates. That means the program will remember where you had those files when you were doing your design, and will look there again if you load the save file. (If you have edited the text in your report template, then the program will always save the changed text in your save file.) Be aware that if you move or change a linked file, or try to open your save file on a different computer which does not have those files, the program will not be able to restore its previous state correctly. Also, Plandroid is not able to embed a PDF plan image file, so any PDF image must be saved as a link.
You can also select the printing scale to use when printing the design via the menu item File -> Print Design.. You can choose to fit the design to the page, or you can choose to print at the fixed scale of 1:100 (or to any other scale you specify). If you print at a fixed scale, the design may not entirely fit on the page, depending on the scale, the size of your diagram and the paper size you are printing on. Note that the Options -> Report tab also has settings that are used to determine what is printed to a design. On that tab you specify if you want to show labels, zones etc. when printing.
The option Show page borders will draw the current printing borders on the design canvas, so you can see directly what your layout will be like. The option Print page borders will also print those borders when you print your design to the printer. The resulting border positions depend on your printer page settings (accessible from the menu item File -> Page Setup), the printing fit/scale options you have chosen, and the design diagram layout options you have selected from the Report Options page. Parts which are not drawn to the Report do not affect the print page borders.
Design Options
Design options
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The Design options page lets you tune how the application behaves in when you are in the Design Page. You can scale the part icon sizes from 100% up to 200% of their physical size, to improve their visibility. (Use this with caution if you are placing rigid parts whose lengths are important, such as rigid pipe fittings, as their lengths will also be scaled. Also, note that changing the scaling may disrupt the alignment of your rigid parts.) You can control how the mouse wheel zoom behaves, control which size labels are show on which parts and which properties are displayed on zones. (Note that each label can also be turned on or off individually, which overrides this setting, and if a part or zone is selected, its labels are always shown). The Show zone properties panel has controls for displaying the names, power loads, air flow loads, or areas of a selection of zones in the status bar. The selected properties are also shown as a label on each zone if the Show labels -> Zone properties setting is activated. Highlight notes with boxes will, when checked, place each note within a highlight box.
Flow Options
Flow options
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The Flow options page controls the calculation parameters that are used when you analyse the air flows in your duct
layout using the Solve Air Flows tool (
).
You can specify to use a full analytical solution which calculates the air flows according to the pressure drops in
the ducts and connectors, or to use a simplified solution which ignores those pressure losses. The analytical solution
will give more accurate results, but is significantly more computationally intensive and is therefore slower. The
simplified solver allocates the unit's airflow in proportion to the duct outlet areas in each branch. This ignores
many factors that will influence the actual flows, but can be solved much more quickly. The various parameters required
for the analytical calculations can be set in this tab, including separate pressure loss coefficients for the fittings
and the outlets, and the conduits' surface roughness. The Open Face Fraction defines how much of the outlets'
faces are obscured by deflector vanes, which influences the resulting air flow velocities at those outlets.
The air flow is also solved when you open the Load Zones table with the Toggle Zones Table tool
(
), to calculate the supplied air. You can investigate
the resultant flows and face velocities with the Part context menu item Properties -> Air Flow and
Properties -> Face Flow Velocity.
The number of air changes required per hour, together with each zone's volume, determines the required air flow rate for each zone.
This tab also contains the settings required when you use the Auto-size Ducts tool
(
) to size the ducting according to your
zone requirements. The Duct size flow rate limits table determines the size of duct required to transport a
specific rate of air flow. This table embodies a complex set of optimisations and compromises that you can tune
according to your own requirements - for example smaller ducts require lower capital costs, but result in higher
flow rates that will generally result in higher running costs and more noise. Although the largest duct diameter
that you list still has a maximum flow rate specified, this limit is not applied. Any flow rate that is above the
largest diameter's limit will still result in the largest diameter being chosen.
Costing Options
Costing options
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Plandroid also allows you to include the labour costs of installing your design in your costing estimates. You can do this by checking either the Show install time column or the Show install costs column items on the Costing options tab. If you show the install time column, you will be presented with a time estimate (in minutes) of how long it should take to install each part in your design. The program will add these times up, and allow you to enter a labour cost (in cost per minute) to calculate the total labour cost. Alternatively, if you prefer to work in fixed installation costs for each part, you can choose to show the install costs column which will likewise add the fixed installation labour costs to your costing. You can, of course, edit both the time and the fixed costs values to suit yourself. Note that although you can show both the install time and install costs columns at the same time, if you do this the costs shown will not be added to your total cost, to avoid labour costs being counted twice. (See the Costing page entry for additional information on labour costs.) You can also use the Show tax row option to display a taxation row. Entering a value in the Modifier field of this row will add that percentage to the total cost.
You can specify in the Drawn parts panel how you treat parts which come in unit lengths (Drawn parts), such as ducting, piping, wiring, and line grilles. If you select Cut lengths and use offcuts, then the program will try to use any offcut lengths where they are long enough to be reused, trying to reduce the material costs. If you select Use whole lengths only then you will be using a whole unit length every time you require even a partial length of material, but saving the work of cutting pieces.
The Running Costs panel lets you enter the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour and the average number of hours a year a typical home owner would run their system in your location. This information is used to calculate the average running costs per year for the system you are designing, which is shown in the status bar of the costing tab and can be inserted as an item into your report. Running costs for each unit are also shown in the tooltips for each unit part in the Design parts catalog, allowing you to quickly compare different design costs.
The Hide price modifiers column panel lets you set the default behaviour of the price modifier column. You can set the program to always hide the price modifiers when you start the application, or to simply use the last state it was in.
The Catalog edits panel controls if the catalog values are allowed to be edited by the user or not, and if any edits that have already been made should be applied when the catalog is read in (see Catalogs for more information on editing catalogs). Catalog edits can be applied for each user individually (if you want to keep your edits private), or you can share your edits with all users of you computer by choosing the global setting. You can use the Set Price Edits button to add or select different price edit files, each one defining a different pricing scheme. This allows you to use different pricing for different types of customers, for example. Note that the Set Price Edits button shows you a different directory, and therefore a different set of price edit files, depending on if you have chosen the private or the global edits setting. You can also clear all the edits you have made to the catalogs with the Clear Price Edits button. This will clear the default price edits file corresponding to your current edits setting, but won't affect any other custom price edits files you have added.
Report Options
Report options
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The report options control the same options that are available from the Report -> Settings tab. These options control the orientation of your design diagram in your report, and what details are shown on it. The Design diagram rotation controls determine the image orientation in the report, in any exported images (from File -> Export -> Design as Image File), and also when printing the design using the menu item File -> Print Design.
You can also specify a watermark image that will be drawn over the top of your design, for example if you wish to discourage plagiarism by marking the design with your company logo. (This option does not control any embedded watermarks that may be set by your parts supplier in their catalog, however.)
The next section describes the Catalog file structure.