US 2003/0208341 A9 · Heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning design apparatus and method

Abstract

A system and method for designing an HVAC system uses a database to manage values of properties corresponding to design elements. Elements include substantially all physical components and connections available for creating an HVAC system design. A user interface represents design elements arbitrarily selectable by a user and connectable to one another in a schematic to establish the HVAC system design. The system may provide, automatically, default values corresponding to the properties corresponding to the design elements. A user may select arbitrarily, from the design elements, an arbitrary number of selected design elements to be interconnected in the HVAC system design. A user may place and interconnect each arbitrary design element, while the system calculates, automatically, values of properties characterizing the arbitrary design elements; validating correctness of the interconnections and properties, calculating performance parameters, and providing drawings

Claims30

Dependent claims

An article as a computer-readable medium storing data structures of both executable and operational types, the data structures comprising:

an input module configured to receive inputs corresponding to design elements, characterized by properties stored in records, the design elements being connectable to establish an HVAC system to be designed;
a design module operably connected to the input module and configured to operate on the inputs to create the records reflecting the properties of the design elements and interactions thereof to establish a design of the HVAC system;
the input module and design module, further configured to automatically provide multiple schematic representations of a selected design element, selected from the design elements, the multiple schematic representations reflecting distinct operational contexts of the selected design element, and to automatically maintain substantially complete and consistent information in the records, describing the properties of the selected design element in each of the distinct operational contexts;
and
an output module configured to provide a user-interpretable output reflecting the design of the HVAC system.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning design apparatus and method

Life of this patent

Heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning design apparatus and method

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims30