Can anyone recommend building-design software?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking for software that will let me design a house.

I want to specify the house plan and construction of the floors, walls, windows & doors, and roof of my house. This would include the dimensions and materials of the walls, and the thickness of the insulation.

I want to be able to specify the heat capacity, thermal conductivity, and thermal conductance of the materials of the house (both structural and inslulation).

The software would figure out how much heat the house will store, how quickly that will leak out, and how quickly I must replenish it to maintain a good room temperature. From this, I can estimate heating and cooling costs. (For this beginning version, I am ignoring humidity and latent heat calculations as used in HVAC design–that will come later.)

The software must take into account the climate of the site (as specified in data obtained from Environment Canada’s National Climate Data and Information Archive–heating and cooling degree-day measurements, for example).

I can do basic versions of these calculations by hand (no 3-D thermal-diffusion calculations, unfortunately), but it’s a real pain in the neck. I have heard of thermal simulation software.

Is anything like this available as freeware, even if its capabilities are spread across several different pieces of software? I fear that it would only be available in the Expensive Commercial End of the market (say, a $10,000 add-on to Autocad)

2

Oh, and it has to be able to handle and convert between British Imperial units, US Customary units, and SI metric units. :slight_smile:

3

I use Autodesk architectural products. I do quite a bit of home conceptual design work and this is where I find the most disciplined array of tools. It fits all of your needs however, it does require some technical acumen. All of the autodesk products do some with tutorials however. Feel free to email me if you have more pointed Q’s.
This is not something with preset templates…this is building from the ground up.

4

Oops I did not read your OP fully… The link I provided is certainly not freeware. You may be looking for something less technical.

5

You’re asking for a pretty large feature-set and I doubt you’ll find such a powerful design package for free. Or even cheap. However, I’d love to be proven wrong. It would be sweet to get out from under Autodesk’s regular cycle of semi-forced upgrades.

My own experience is with both Architectural Desktop and Chief Architect. Both are professional level design and drafting programs capable of doing most, if not all of what you’ve specified. Also used by a few of my colleagues is Softplan but I’ve never used it myself. They’re all fairly pricy for an individual consumer but, in this area at least, you really do get what you pay for.