The building plan holds every space on the project, level by level. A space drawn on it takes its floor area, walls, roof, floor, windows and doors from the drawing, so the envelope is entered once and shared with Air Systems and Ducts.
- 1
In Building plan, choose the Rectangle tool and drag out a room, or Outline and click each corner. Each room you draw becomes a space in the ledger.
- 2
Choose Select, then click a wall, a window or the room itself to set what it is made of in the Inspector.
- 3
Choose Save plan, then complete the space's sheet below the plan and choose Save space.
Levels, north and snapping
- Choose the level you're drawing on under Level, and rename it in Level name. The Level button with the plus adds a level. The one with the bin removes the level shown, but only when nothing is drawn on it.
- North is the bearing of true north on the plan, in degrees clockwise from plan-up. Kelvin works out each wall's orientation from it.
- With Snap on, points snap to other rooms' corners first, then their walls, then a 100 mm grid. Rooms drawn against each other then share a wall exactly.
- Undo and Redo work on every plan edit (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z).
Walls, ceilings and floors
Select a wall, or right-click it, to set its Exposure: Outdoor, Unconditioned space or Ground.
- An outdoor wall takes a Construction from Kelvin's reference library. Choosing one copies its U-value where the row carries one. Change the U-value only on the construction's own source.
- A wall to an unconditioned space needs its U-value and the temperature beyond it at each design condition, Beyond, cooling and Beyond, heating. A blank heating figure takes the cooling one.
- Copy to every wall puts the selected wall's exposure, construction, U-value and temperatures beyond it on every other wall of the space.
- Right-click a wall for Set length… and Split wall at its midpoint. Right-click a corner for Remove corner — merge its walls.
- Select the room for its Ceiling (Roof to outdoors, Space above or Not a load surface) and Floor (On ground, Space below or Not a load surface).
Partitions come from the drawing
Where a wall runs back to back with another room's wall on the same level, Kelvin treats that stretch as a partition. You never mark it. It takes the neighbouring space's own cooling and heating dry bulbs, so its load follows that space. Give it a Partition construction or Partition U-value in the wall's inspector; the U-value is set on both sides at once. Move a wall and the partition follows.
A partition needs its neighbour to be a space with both dry bulbs entered. Until then the sheet lists the partition as missing.
Windows and doors
- Choose Window or Door and drag along a wall for its width. Set its Width, Height and Centre along wall in the inspector.
- A window takes its Glazing from the library, which copies its U-value where the row carries one, an Interior shade measured for that glazing, and how much of it is Externally shaded (0 to 1). External shading removes beam sun only.
- A window has to sit in an outdoor wall. One placed in a wall shared with another space is listed as missing until it is moved.
- A door is opaque. Its area comes out of the wall it sits in, and it conducts on its own U-value, with a Conduction time series for its delay. A door in a shared wall is a partition at the neighbouring space's temperatures.
Rooms and spaces
- A room drawn while a space with no room is selected becomes that space. Otherwise it becomes a new space, named on its sheet.
- An outline that isn't a space yet calculates nothing. Select it and choose Draw an existing space here or Make it a new space.
- Remove from the plan… takes the room's outline, walls and windows off the plan. The space stays in the ledger and can be drawn again.
- Deleting a space from the ledger takes its room off the plan too.
One plan for three stations
Space Loads, Air Systems and Ducts edit the same plan. What you draw on one is on the others at once, unsaved changes included, and Save plan on any of them saves the whole plan. Saving the plan saves the project, so every space calculated before it reads as stale until it is saved again. Saving a space whose walls changed saves the plan first.
Note
Kelvin supplies no U-value, construction or temperature on the plan. A blank stays blank, and the space's sheet lists it as missing.