Rhvac Version 8 Recent Update History

Version Changes

4/28/2008 8.01.264 (Includes Bill of Materials Beta 3, First Public Beta)

1. In the Check Figures sections of the reports, changed the text "With Outside Air" to "Including Ventilation Air."

2. Made changes to Bill of Materials as listed in its ReadmeBillMat.doc file, and included the first public beta.

4/18/2008 8.01.252

1. Fixed a bug on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window where if you had a zone with only one room in it and you checked the box for that room it was possible for the Flow input to be set to zero instead of the zone's airflow.

2. Updated the Elite Software Update Manager program so that it downloads equipment and picture files much faster now. Also made it so the equipment files are much more likely to always be available for downloading.

4/3/2008 8.01.251

1. Fixed a bug that developed in the previous update, where Drawing Board's Undo dialog would not let you undo any steps.

2. Added several floor materials based on Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) construction. The new materials include panel thicknesses ranging from 4.5 to 13.25 inches. Both the overall R-value of the panel itself and the per inch R-value of the EPS core is shown with each material. The U-values of each of the new materials were calculated using the same standard Manual J procedures that were used for each of the existing materials.

3. Changed the text for the roof types again to make it clear what kind of construction each type is referring to. Also changed the tab control to option buttons. Also added a Roof Type Selection topic to the help file that thoroughly explains the choices.

3/24/2008 8.01.248

1. Added several roof and wall materials that have spray foam insulation, including both open and closed cell foam, and including different stud and joist sizes. The spray foam roofs are in new categories 18A1, 18B1 and 18C1. The spray foam walls are in new categories 12C1, 12D1, 12F1 and 12F2. The U-values of each of the new materials were calculated using the same standard Manual J procedures that were used for each of the existing materials.

2. Added several roof and wall materials based on Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) construction. The new materials include panel thicknesses ranging from 4.5 to 13.25 inches. Both the overall R-value of the panel itself and the per inch R-value of the EPS core is shown with each material. The U-values of each of the new materials were calculated using the same standard Manual J procedures that were used for each of the existing materials.

3. Changed the text used for the three main types of roof materials to make it clear precisely what kind of construction each option is referring to.

4. Made it so the data in the Glass Options part of the Glass Material dialog (insect screen, etc.) is included in the description of custom glass items on the summary reports. Formerly it was only included for standard glass types.

5. Fixed a bug that made it so the main window and certain other large windows would sometimes not reopen at their previous width and/or height.

6. To make the report easier to read for multiple system projects, added a blank line between systems on the Load Preview window and the corresponding print preview report.

7. Corrected the weather data for Sudbury and Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

8. Fixed a problem where it was possible after clicking the menu, "Tools | StatusBar" for the statusbar or the program's taskbar to not immediately display correctly.

9. Made it so when you start a project with the Blank Project icon, the data on the Default Room Data window is blank. Formerly, it would have some example dimensions and materials already filled in.

10. Modified the REScheck and Rem/Rate code to properly handle SIPs roofs and walls.

1/22/2008 8.01.245 (Bill of Materials Test Version)

1. Fixed a bug where the program would lockup upon opening the Bill of Materials window if there were no ducts from Manual D Ductsize present.

1/20/2008 8.01.243 (Bill of Materials Test Version)

1. Made some improvements to the file exported for the REScheck program. Added a comment that includes the room name and construction material code for each floor, roof, wall, glass and door. Added the building orientation and that of each wall.

2. Turned on Bill of Materials for testing and demonstration.

1/11/2008 8.01.238

1. Fixed a bug that developed in version 8.01.236, where the Drawing Board template files were not being installed.

12/20/2007 8.01.236

1. Fixed a bug on the Detailed Room Loads report that developed in one of the recent updates, where the "Runout Air" line in the top section of the report always said zero CFM.

2. Included a new version of the Elite Software Update Manager program that includes a Latest Elite Software News Headlines section.

3. Fixed a bug that developed in one of the recent versions, where on a first time installation the dropdown help for the duct material roughness factor input on the General Project Data window did not have any items in the list.

10/26/2007 8.01.234

1. Made it so if the Length and Width inputs for a roof are not zero, they will not automatically be set to equal the dimensions of the room upon entering a new construction material number into the Roof Material input. The same change applies to floors.

2. Increased the maximum value for duct leakage rate on the Duct Load Factors dialog from 1 to 100 to allow modeling of an outrageously leaky duct system.

3. Fixed a bug in the calculation of the system heating supply CFM when the System Air Type input is set to Auto, where the ductwork sensible loss was not being included in the formula.

4. Made changes in Drawing Board and Proposal Maker, as described in their Readme files.

8/31/2007 8.01.231

1. Fixed a bug that developed in the previous update that made it so the two reports for Manual D Ductsize would not print if you generated reports while the Drawing Board window was open. Also fixed a bug that would prevent those same two reports from being included under the following circumstances: the Print Preview window was not already open, and the Building Rotation report (the one with the checkbox labled General Overview on the Select Reports dialog) was selected.

2. Changed to an older version of the PDF creation software used for the Print Preview window in order to prevent a problem in the PDF files where the labels on graphs were blank. Made it so when this older version of this PDF creation software, VSPDF8.ocx, is written to the Windows\System32 folder, it always overwrites any existing version of that file (since the newer versions of it are the ones with the bug).

8/27/2007 8.01.227

1. For Drawing Board projects, fixed a bug where the latest data from the rooms on the drawing would not necessarily show up in the project unless you did something that made the project calculate results while the Drawing Board window was open.

8/15/2007 8.01.226

1. Made it so when you drop a new Room object on the Drawing Board window it starts off with the System Number and Zone Number properties equal to the ones you set on the Default Room Data window.

2. Fixed a bug on the Room object in Drawing Board, where the recently added properties, "Roof STD (Intrinsic)" and "Roof WTD (Intrinsic)" were not being added immediately when a new room was dropped onto the drawing. These properties were present for a given room only after closing and reopening the Drawing Board window.

3. Fixed a bug when using a very large number for DPI (font sizes) that would cause the program to lock up upon trying to display the Duct Surface Area Calculator dialog.

4. Fixed a bug where if a wall in Drawing Board had its Kneewall property set to True that wall would still have its length included in the automatic calculation of the floor perimeter that gets inserted into the "Floor Perimeter (Intrinsic)" property.

5. Fixed a bug on the Building Rotation Duct Sizes report, where if you entered minus one (-1) for the Number of Registers input on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window that duct would not be included on the report, and rows for duct items that followed it could be labeled incorrectly.

6. Fixed a bug that could happen on the page header of reports, where if you entered any semicolons within the text of your project title in order to make it have more than one line in the page header, the main header on that page could start above the bottom of the page header.

7/19/2007 8.01.223

1. Fixed a bug on the Building Rotation Duct Size Preview window and its corresponding Print Preview report, where the "Bldg. High Dir." printed at the bottom of the report was only correct if the Building Orientation on the General Project Data window was set to North.

2. Fixed a bug on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, where on several of the inputs it was practically impossible to type in a number that included any digits to the right of the decimal point.

3. Fixed a problem on the Ventilation Requirement dialog, where if the amount of ventilation required (as shown in the "Ventilation CFM Required" box) was less than or equal to 10, the program would still insert that value into the four Ventilation and Exhaust inputs at the bottom of the dialog, even though values of 10 and less are interpreted by the program as being air changes per hour rather than CFM. Now if the calculated ventilation requirement shown in the "Ventilation CFM Required" box is 10 or less the program ignores it and sets the requirement to zero.

4. Made several major changes to Proposal Maker, as described in its ReadmePM.doc file.

5. Made it so when you type a number into the STD or WTD input for a wall to turn it into a partition, the perimeter of floor 1 is updated appropriately, depending on your settings for that feature on the Rhvac Options dialog.

6. Added a message when you click "Save as PDF File" on the Print Preview window's toolbar that explains that the PDF you create may have problems with the graphics, and that recommends you instead use the freeware PDF creator from www.CutePDF.com.

6/27/2007 8.01.221

1. Fixed a problem on the Print Preview versions of the Load Preview report and the Building Rotation Duct Size Preview report, where with some printer drivers the final column of the grid would print on another page.

2. Fixed a bug that developed in version 8.01.220, where the dropdown help for the People Loads inputs on the General Project Data window did not include the list of choices.

3. Fixed a bug that developed fairly recently, where the Room Data window's toolbar was visible (but inoperable) on the Default Room Data window.

6/25/2007 8.01.220

1. Fixed a bug on the new checkbox list of zones and rooms on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, where the list could be blank at first if you changed an Item of type Misc or Fitting to Duct.

2. Corrected some things in the weather database, including removing duplicate records, changing the latitude values of cities in the weather database that are below the equator to be negative instead of positive, and correcting some of the spelling.

3. Changed the format of the weather database used by Rhvac so that it is the same file as the one used by Energy Audit. Added a button to the Weather Database window to allow you to convert your old weather database file to the new format, for those who may have edited the data.

4. Fixed a bug where it was possible under certain circumstances for the program to lock up while generating the Manual D Ductsize Duct Pressure Changes Graph in the Print Preview window if the project had multiple systems.

5. Fixed a problem that could occur with a Manual D Ductsize project, where if you had rooms on the drawing with zero load and therefore zero supply CFM, the Duct Size column of the Load Preview would say in red letters, "Not MDD: 0-0." Now when that happens it just says, "0-0" in the normal text color.

6. Fixed a bug that developed in version 8.01.217 on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, where if you selected Presize for a duct's Sizing Option input, the presize width, height and diameter inputs were positioned too far to the left.

7. Fixed a bug on the new Building Rotation Duct Size Preview window and printed report, where it was possible for runouts defined on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window to appear twice in the list: once under "Supply Runouts" and again under "Other Ducts."

8. Corrected the tab order (as well as the Enter key order) on the inputs on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

9. Fixed a bug on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window that developed in version 8.01.217, where if that window was open and you opened a different project that did not have any paths defined yet, the program would lock up.

10. Fixed a bug on the Room Data window, where if you had not yet clicked the button beside the room number input to display the list of rooms in the project, and you entered any number into that input and pressed Enter, a message box would display saying that the room number you entered was higher than the number of rooms that have already been created in the project.

6/5/2007 8.01.217

1. Made it so when you perform a rotation or mirroring with the Rotate Rooms dialog the Building Orientation Comment direction on the General Project Data window gets changed as well. The message box that opens after the rotation or mirroring operation is complete mentions that fact as well.

2. In Drawing Board, took measures to prevent a problem where using the Undo feature under certain circumstances could corrupt the walls in a Room object.

3. In Drawing Board, added a Regenerate Room command to the right click popup menu for the Room object. This command makes fewer changes to the drawing than the existing Rebuild Room command, and may be all that is needed to correct any problems that a particular room is having.

4. Added a new window called, "Building Rotation Duct Size Preview," available from the Project menu. This window is a report of the heating and cooling airflows for each of the eight possible directions of rotation for the building. It includes a column for the duct size for the maximum airflow from all directions. Each duct in the project is included in the report, whether from the built-in duct sizing, the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator, or from Manual D Ductsize. Also added a checkbox on the Select Reports dialog to include a printed version of this new report.

5. Added two new columns to the Load Preview window: "Sys Htg CFM" and "Sys Clg CFM." Changed the captions for the "Winter CFM" and "Summer CFM" columns to "Min Htg CFM" and "Min Clg CFM," and made those columns hidden by default (you can turn them back on by click the new "Show Min Flow" button in the Load Preview window's toolbar).

6. Changed the Load Preview report in the Print Preview window to be almost identical to the grid in the Load Preview window itself.

7. Added a note to the bottom of the Load Preview window to explain the circumstances that can cause the sum of the room CFM values to not equal the system's CFM.

8. Removed the Room Airflow option from the Rhvac Options dialog and moved it to a new input on the System Data window. The new input is called, "Airflow Option," and can be set individually for each system now.

9. Added a new input called, "System CFM Htg" to the System Data window. When the System Air Type input is set to Fixed, it lets you optionally enter a separate heating CFM for the system.

10. Added automatic duct sizing at the zone level for each zone in the Load Preview window and printed report.

11. Made several changes to the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window. Added a System Number input to the top that lets you specify the system for the current path. Added a checkable list of rooms for items of type Duct that lets you link the Flow input for that item to the calculated airflow of one or more rooms or zones. If you check the box for only one room, you can also set the number of registers in a new input to the right of the list. And you can specify that a Duct item is a return duct by checking the new Return checkbox. The list of rooms can be toggled on and off by clicking a new "Details" button below the Flow input, or by clicking a new toggle button in that window's toolbar. Also added four new boxes to the top of the window to display the overall friction rate status and other data.

12. Replaced the array of checkbox controls on the Reports tab of the Select Reports dialog with a grid. Also made the Select Reports dialog sizable.

13. Made it so when you select an air conditioner or heat pump with the Find HVAC Equipment window, the Sensible Capacity and Latent Capacity inputs on the System Data window are filled in automatically, based on the selected unit's cooling capacity and the value you entered in the Percent Sensible Capacity input on the System Data window.

14. Modified some of the messages that are shown when the program license is at the demo level and the number of rooms exceeds or would exceed the maximum number allowed at the demo level.

5/2/2007 8.01.211

1. Fixed a bug where it was possible under certain circumstances for the slider on the Project Explorer window to be moved too far to the left and therefore be invisible, making it so you could not see the tree outline part of that window.

2. Fixed a bug on the Find HVAC Equipment window when the list was set to display air source heat pumps, where the column header for Qualifying Tier was in the wrong place.

3. Changed the maximum acceptable value for the Percent Sensible Capacity input on the System Data window from 95 to 100.

4. Fixed a bug in the Import from Energy Audit feature, where air source heat pump 47 and 17 degree capacities and efficiencies would not import from a project that had been edited in Energy Audit version 7.02.40 or higher.

5. Made it so when you click an item in the list of the dropdown help for the overhang projection and offset while the current glass is a skylight, the program merely closes the dropdown help and does not change the values in the inputs.

6. Changed the caption of the Calculate button on the Duct Load Factors dialog to "Refresh," to more accurately describe the purpose of that button, which is merely to refresh the display of the numbers shown in the Results area, and to make it more clear that you do not have to click it to get the program to calculate what it needs to. Also made it so that button is available even when the "Update SA from MDD" input is set to Yes.

7. In Drawing Board, added copy and paste functionality for windows, doors, and walls. You can copy a window then paste it into another existing window, or you can paste it into a wall. The same goes for doors. Right click on a window, door, or wall to see the new copy and paste items in the popup menu.

8. Added Summer Temperature Difference (STD) and Winter Temperature Difference (WTD) inputs for floors on the Room Data window. These inputs let you set the floor to be treated like a partition in the calculations, where the temperature difference you enter for winter or summer is used instead of the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperatures, and the loss or gain is simply equal to the u-value times the area times the STD or WTD. Did the same for roofs. Also added corresponding properties for the appropriate objects in Drawing Board.

9. In Drawing Board, added a property called Kneewall to the Wall object. If you set it to True it blanks out the Material and U-Value properties and makes it so when you click the button beside the Material property the Roof/Ceiling Material dialog opens instead of the Wall Material dialog.

10. Increased the maximum allowed skylight tilt from 60 to 90 degrees.

11. Included a new version of the Update Manager program that makes it possible to install multiple HVAC equipment databases in a single operation.

12. Modified the setup to not display the blue gradient background and graphics, and to instead only display the wizard dialog and the little window that shows the installation progress.

3/22/2007 8.01.210

1. Fixed a bug that could happen under certain circumstances in the calculation of the value shown in the "System CFM" column in the reports and on the Load Preview window. If you had a system that contained rooms in multiple zones, and the System Air Type input was set to Fixed for the system, and the value you entered for the System CFM input was less than the sum of the room airflows calculated with the peak fenestration gain procedure, the values shown for the rooms in the System CFM column would be too low, since they were merely each room's portion of the fixed CFM you entered for the system. This update makes it so if the sum of the peak room CFM values is greater than the fixed CFM you entered for the system, the System CFM column will show the peak CFM values in each of the rooms.

3/19/2007 8.01.209

1. Made it so when rooms are in more than one system in a project the Building Rotation report includes a table for each system that shows the supply airflow, gains, and tonnages at each rotation.

2. Fixed a bug where after generating reports that included the Building Rotation report, if you then changed any input value in one of the project windows that had been open during report generation, it was possible for your changes to not be saved and for the inputs to return to the previous values that had been present before generating the reports.

3. Added an option to the General tab of the Rhvac Options dialog that lets you decide whether or not you want to include partition walls in the calcuation of the perimeter of floor 1 (when the option to automatically calculate the perimeter is turned on).

4. Took measures to enable the program to work properly on Windows Vista without having to run it as administrator.

3/6/2007 8.01.208 (Private Test Version)

1. Made it so the "Floor 1 perimeter tracks sum of wall lengths" feature excludes partition walls in the calculation of the sum of the current room's wall lengths.

2. Added text to the Winter Infiltration and Summer Infiltration dialogs to make it clear that if you enter a value greater than 10 the program will treat the value as a direct CFM.

3. Updated the REScheck export file to include the conditioned floor area. Also added "2006 IECC" to the list of code options from which to select.

4. Changed the help file from WinHelp to HTML Help.

2/21/2007 8.01.207 (Private Beta 1 for Bill of Materials)

1. Made some minor adjustments to the Bill of Materials program

2/16/2007 8.01.203

1. Fixed a small bug on the Floor Material dialog (as well as the roof, wall, glass and door dialogs) where if there was no match for the current material in the Favorites, Recent or Custom lists, the Favorites tab would sometimes not be the selected tab by default.

2. Turned the Bill of Materials feature back on, and made adjustments regarding that feature being a separatly licensed program.

3. Changed the arrangement of the grids on the Assemblies tab of the Bill of Materials Parts Database window to make it easier to see each grid.

2/8/2007 8.01.202

1. On the Building Rotation Report and the Building Rotation Tonnage graph, made it so the Recommended or Net tonnage is only shown if the corresponding "Show Net tonnage" or "Show Recommended tonnage" checkbox on the General tab of the Select Reports dialog is checked.

2. Increased the width of the lines on the "Building Rotation Tonnage" graph.

3. Added the ability to set the Reference input for a glass to a partition wall.

4. Fixed a bug that developed in one of the recent versions on the Detailed Room Loads report, where some of the lines in the General section of the report were formatted incorrectly when Manual D Ductsize was not used to size the ducts.

12/20/2006 8.01.200

1. Divided the new Orientation Comment input on the General Project Data window into two inputs. One lets you enter a name of part of the building as a reference, such as "Front door" or "House." The other input lets you select the direction that that part of the building faces. Also modifed the new Building Rotation report and its graphs to clearly state which direction the front door or house faces in each of the rotations.

2. Added an "EnergyGauge USA Warnings and Errors" dialog that opens after you export an ENB file with the new Export EnergyGauge USA file feature. This dialog shows you a list of all of the warning and error messages that apply to the ENB file you just created, and lets you save that list to a text file.

3. Corrected some problems with the rotation calculations that were present in test version 8.01.198.

4. Made further adjustments to the Export EnergyGauge USA file feature.

5. Moved the new Duct Load Factors section of the reports from the System Summary Loads report to the Miscellaneous report.

12/15/2006 8.01.198 (Private Test Version)

1. Changed the name of the report based on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window to help make it clear that the report is based solely on that window, which is independent from the rest of the project.

2. Made it so when you have drawn ducts with Manual D Ductsize any duct sizes shown on the reports are from Manual D Ductsize instead of from the built-in Rhvac duct sizing. The reports affected are Load Preview, Room Load Summary, and Detailed Room Loads. The Load Preview window also includes this change.

3. Modified the Load Preview window to show the results in a tree outline in addition to the above change. Also changed the column headers to be multiline.

4. Added a Building Rotation report. This report shows each room's airflow requirements for each of the eight possible degrees of rotation of the building. It also shows the building level cooling loads and airflow requirements for each rotation. And it includes a "Building Rotation Tonnage" graph, which shows the net and recommended tonnages over each rotation, as well as a "Building Rotation Hourly Net Gain" graph. The required extra calculations are performed only when you check the new "Building Rotation" checkbox on the Select Reports dialog.

5. Added a new Orientation Comment input on the Project tab of the General Project Data window. The text you enter here, such as "Front door faces southeast," is printed on the new Building Rotation report.

6. Under certain circumstances, added a warning message box that is displayed when you use the built-in PDF file creation feature. The warning message box is displayed when creating a PDF file from a Drawing Board drawing or a Proposal Maker document. The warning explains that it is better to use PDF creation software such as the free PDF writer available from www.CutePDF.com.

7. Fixed a bug with the airflows of rooms during the calculation of duct sizes with Manual D Ductsize when the project was set to metric units.

8. Fixed a bug where some of the properties of the Manual D Ductsize duct objects in the Object Properties window in Drawing Board were not being converted to their metric equivalents when the project was set to metric units. These properties were the presize dimensions, the calculated dimensions, and the maximum and minimum height.

9. On the load summary reports, added the door's u-value to the criteria the program uses in deciding whether or not to group similar doors together on the report. The same change was made in one of the recent versions for glass items, walls, roofs and floors.

10. Fixed a bug in the export of ENB files for Energy Gauge USA, where the wall area being written to the file was the net area instead of the gross.

11. Made it so when you export and ENB file for Energy Gauge USA the "Attached Garage" input will be set to Yes and the default garage data will be filled in. Also made it so any partition walls in Rhvac will show up in Energy Gauge USA with the "Adjacent To" input set to "Garage."

12. Modifed the duct sizing calculations for Manual D Ductsize, the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, and the built-in duct sizing in Rhvac. Made it so for rectangular ducts the calculations use the actual velocity instead of that of the equivalent round duct. Also for rectangular ducts, made it so the program uses the hydraulic diameter instead of the equivalent round diameter for certain calculations such as the Reynolds number and friction factor.

13. Added new menu items under the File menu to let you e-mail your current project or one or more other project files.

14. Added a Duct Load Factor Scenarios section to the System Summary Loads report. If there are duct loads in the system this new section shows the details of each of the duct load factor scenarios used.

12/1/2006 8.01.193 (Private Test Version)

1. Made changes to the ENB file export for EnergyGauge USA to eliminate errors that would occur in that program upon opening the project after importing the ENB file.

11/22/2006 8.01.192 (Private Test Version)

1. Added text to the beginning of the standard door type descriptions to indicate whether the door is wood or metal.

2. Added the ability to export an ENB file for the "EnergyGauge USA" program.

11/14/2006 8.01.191

1. Fixed a bug on the zone summary loads report, where the sensible gain and loss due to ductwork were not always being included in the total sensible gain and loss for the zone. This bug only affected the zone totals and did not affect the values at the system or room levels.

2. Added text to the Manual D Ductsize warning that is added to the Evaluation of Project window whenever a Supply Main Trunk's airflow is several CFM different from the airflow used for the system in Rhvac. The warning now includes, when applicable, the fact that your selection for the Room Airflow option on the Rhvac Options dialog could be the cause of the discrepancy.

3. Fixed a problem where Rhvac could sometimes lock up if there was a circular connection with the ducts in Manual D Ductsize.

11/8/2006 8.01.188

1. Made it so the airflows used for rooms in the Sys.CFM column of the reports are consistent with the option you select on the Duct Sizing tab of the Rhvac Options dialog. Also renamed the Duct Sizing tab to "Room Airflow" because of the greater effect of that option now. This change corrects an inconsitency between the airflows reported for rooms in the Rhvac reports and those used for duct sizing, including ducts drawn with Manual D Ductsize.

2. Fixed some bugs in Manual D Ductsize, which you can read about by clicking the menu "Help | Manual D Ductsize | Readme for Manual D Ductsize."

3. Added a "Rebuild Room" item to the right click popup menu for Room objects in Drawing Board. This feature can be useful if you have a problem room where the room background polygon or the walls seem to be behaving abnormally. It will automatically create a duplicate room in the same place and then delete the original room.

11/1/2006 8.01.177

1. Fixed a bug in the exporting of REScheck files, where the program was not accounting for the room Occurrences input or the glass Occurrences input if either contained a value greater than one. This problem made it so the areas of the affected items in the REScheck file would be too small.

2. Added "2003 IECC" to the list of codes from which you can select on the Create REScheck File dialog.

3. Added an option on the General tab of the Select Reports dialog that says, "Include total net gain line on AED Report," which defaults to being checked. When checked, the AED Report's graph includes an additional line above the other three that shows the total hourly net gain. It is the same as the glass hourly gain, shifted up by an amount equal to the system's gain of everything other than the glass gain.

4. Added the text of the System Concept Warning, when appropriate, to the bottom of the AED Report. This text is included if the warning is needed and if the existing option on the Rhvac Options dialog to show such warnings is turned on.

5. Made changes to the "Winter Infiltration" and "Summer Infiltration" dialogs to account for changes in Manual J version 2.00 that were not in Manual J's Addendum D. The "3 or 4 Exposures" tab is now divided into two tabs: one for single story and one for two story. And the air changes per hour values for the "1 or 2 Exposures" tab are slightly different now as well.

6. Made some internal changes to Manual D Ductsize to accommodate the upcoming new Bill of Materials program. These changes make it so for any existing Drawing Board projects you have that contain Manual D Ductsize ducts, you will need to open the Drawing Board window at least one time before printing the Manual D Ductsize reports.

10/16/2006 8.01.173 (Official Release of Manual D Ductsize)

1. Added more Manual D Ductsize help to the help file.

2. Removed the OK buttons from the Rotate Rooms and Global Material Change dialogs to avoid confusion. Changed the captions of the existing buttons to make it clear that one performs an action and the other closes the dialog.

3. Made it so the Custom Graph window recalls the previous selections in the Cooling or Heating and Pie or Bar comboboxes in its toolbar.

4. Fixed a bug where the Scope combobox in the Custom Graph window started off being blank when the window was first opened even though the scope of the graph was Building.

9/29/2006 8.01.172 (Beta 6 for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Added Manual D Ductsize topics to the help file.

2. Made more changes to Manual D Ductsize, as listed in its ReadmeMDD.doc file.

3. Updated the toolbars to a newer style with a different appearance.

4. Put the menu items under the Help menu for Drawing Board, Proposal Maker and Manual D Ductsize each in their own sub menu, in order to make all items in the Help menu visible at the same time when using one of the smaller screen resolutions.

5. Made it so the Duct Surface Area input is grayed out if you select Yes for the Update SA from MDD input on the Duct Load Factors dialog. Also updated the dropdown help for the Update SA from MDD input to make it more clear that you should only select Yes if you have drawn ducts in Drawing Board using Manual D Ductsize duct objects.

9/21/2006 8.01.162 (Beta 5 for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Made it so the duct sensible and AED excursion loads are shown at the room level instead of only at the system level. This change mainly involves cosmetic differences in the reports, since these loads were already being accounted for in the calculation of supply airflow values for the rooms. It was done to make the reports more consistent with form J1 in Manual J. Note that duct latent gains are still shown only at the system and building levels, again in accordance with form J1.

2. Temporarily turned off the Bill of Materials features in Manual D Ductsize, which will be available soon as a separately licensed program.

3. Made more changes to Manual D Ductsize, as listed in its ReadmeMDD.doc file.

4. Updated all of the sample projects that are in Drawing Board mode to include Manual D Ductsize ducts on the drawing.

9/13/2006 8.01.158 (Beta 5 for Manual D Ductsize, In-House Only)

1. Fixed a problem where the Bill of Materials window would not refresh its data properly if you opened a different project while both the Drawing Board window and the Bill of Materials window were open.

2. Set the default layout input on the Bill of Materials Layout dialog to have a white background.

3. Made more bill of materials changes.

9/12/2006 8.01.157 (Beta 5 for Manual D Ductsize, In-House Only)

1. Made technical changes regarding the saving of the Drawing Board and Manual D Ductsize data.

2. Added ducts on the drawing and a bill of materials to the project, "Sample DB MJ8.rhv."

9/8/2006 8.01.154 (Special Build, Beta 5 for Manual D Ductsize, Bill of Materials Features Disabled)

1. Temporarily disabled the Bill of Materials features for Manual D Ductsize.

2. Fixed a bug where it was possible under certain conditions for the Copy License File function on the About Rhvac dialog to fail to copy the file.

3. Added a check for circular connections to the Manual D Ductsize calculations. If such a situation exists an error is added to the Evaluation of Project window.

9/5/2006 8.01.153 (Beta 5 for Manual D Ductsize, In-House Only)

1. Made it so systems and zones appear in the correct order on the Load Preview window and on the reports even if rooms are ordered so that rooms with higher system and zone numbers come before those with lower ones.

2. Corrected summer design DB and WB for Cheyenne, WY in the weather database.

3. Fixed a bug where if the Room Data window was open and you had ever clicked on the Edit menu, using any of the functions in the Edit menu would cause the program to have a fatal error and shut down.

4. Fixed a bug where the program would lock up when you tried to open the Duct Load Factors dialog if the system had a very large font size setting.

5. Made it so if you change the Sheet property of a Room object or any object that is part of a Room (a Wall, Skylight, etc.), the Sheet property for all Smart Figure objects that are part of that room will be changed as well.

6. Added a Bill of Materials window that includes an automatic takeoff of the duct system entered with Manual D Ductsize. Also included an equivalent printed report.

7. Added a pressure changes graph to the reports available for Manual D Ductsize, which shows the static and total pressure available at each point along the route with the highest static pressure loss.

8. Made it so when you first open the program it asks you whether or not you want to check for an update. Also added a new "Set Check for Update Options" menu under the Help menu. You can now select whether you want the program to ask you, to automatically check, or to not check. If you set it to automatically check, you can also set it to notify you of any updates to the HVAC equipment databases you may have installed, which are used in Elite programs such as Energy Audit and Rhvac. Also made it so the Update Available and similar dialogs from the Update Manager program float over all other windows. This change prevents the possibility of the Update Available window being put behind the main program window where you might not notice it.

9. On the Drawing Board window's Catalog Browser, made it so the Rhvac MJ8 Drawing Objects and Manual D Ductsize Drawing Objects catalogs appear first in the list. Also made it so inapplicable catalogs (such as those for Chvac and Ductsize) do not get loaded.

10. Updated the setup to not prompt for the location of the program folder if the Elite folder has already been established by a previous installation of this program or another Elite Software program. Also updated the setup to never prompt for the location of the Elite\Common folder.

11. Added a "Save Report and E-Mail" button to the Print Preview window's toolbar. Clicking this button will save the reports in the new Report Viewer File format (RVF) and attach it to a new e-mail message, where the body of the message includes a link to download the latest version of Report Viewer from the Elite Software web site.

12. Fixed a bug where the Elite\DrawBrd\Templates folder was not the first time default location of the "Save In" box at the top of the "Save Drawing as Template" dialog that opens when you click the menu "Drawing Board Tools | Save Copy of Drawing as Template."

Version 8.01.151 [2/6/2006] (Beta 4 for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Fixed a bug that developed in a recent version, where if you used the new feature where you can save the drawing data within the Rhvac project file and you had the Drawing Board window open and opened a different project that also had a drawing saved within its project file, the drawing from the first project would stay loaded in the Drawing Board window.

2. Fixed a bug where if you had set the New Project option on the Rhvac Options dialog to "Copy This File" and the file in the box below had a reference to an external drawing board picture file (*.dbp), the new, untitled project's drawing file reference would be the same as that of the file that was copied. Now if you start your project that way it will make a copy of the referenced dbp file into an "untitled" temporary file and estblish a link to that file from the Rhvac project file.

3. Added the ability to link the duct surface area on the Duct Load Factors dialog to that calculated by Manual D Ductsize. Each duct on the drawing now includes a "Duct Load Factor Scenario" property that you can set to a value from zero to 5 (zero meaning no scenario). If you select this option for a scenario on the Duct Load Factors dialog the calculations will be performed repeatedly in an iterative loop if necessary in order to find a matching combination of surface area and load.

4. Made more changes to Manual D Ductsize, as listed in its ReadmeMDD.doc file.

Version 8.01.144 [1/20/2006] (In-House Beta 3a for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Made more changes to Manual D Ductsize.
   

Version 8.01.142 [1/10/2006] (Beta 3 for Manual D Ductsize, 1st public beta)

1. Made several changes to Manual D Ductsize, which is at Beta 3 for this release, its first public beta. Click the menu "Help | Readme for Manual D Ductsize" to see the changes in this beta that are specific to that program.

2. Fixed a bug that made it so the Drawing Board temporary file (extension dbt) would not be deleted when you closed a project under certain circumstances.

3. Modified the captions on the New Drawing Options dialog to explain when it is better to save the drawing data as an external DBP file rather than saving the drawing data internally.

4. Fixed a problem where it was possible for the "Check Drawing File Link" dialog to be displayed when a project was not in Drawing Board mode. Now a message box is displayed instead, which says that the project is not in Drawing Board mode.

Version 8.01.140 [12/13/2005] (Beta 2 for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Added full on-the-fly units conversion to the Rhvac objects in Drawing Board. Now you can change the Units setting on the General Project Data window at any time and all the affected properties on the drawing will be immediately updated to reflect the current units setting. But note that dimensional properties such as "Room Height" are always displayed according to the Units selection on the Drawing Properties window, regardless of the Units setting on the General Project Data window.

2. Added items in the Help menu to display the ReadMe files for Proposal Maker, Drawing Board, and Manual D Ductsize.

3. Click the menu "Help | Readme for Manual D Ductsize" to see the changes in this beta that are specific to that program.

4. Added the ability to save the Drawing Board drawing data within the Rhvac project file, rather than as a separate file. You can convert a project from the 2 file system to saving internally or vice-versa by clicking the Change button on the Check Drawing File Link dialog.

Version 8.01.137 [11/29/2005] (Beta 1 for Manual D Ductsize)

1. Added Description, Blower CFM, and Comment to the things that can be printed on the Room Load Summary report for the equipment for a system. These inputs are taken from the Equipment tab of the System Data window, and are now included in the report if they are not blank.

2. Added a "Duplicate Room" command to the Special Commands of the Room object in Drawing Board. Right click on a Room object on the drawing, then click "Duplicate Room" to create a new room that has all the same walls, windows, doors, etc., as the selected room. The upper left corner of the new room will be at the point where the mousepointer was when you right clicked.

3. Fixed a bug where if the "Display values in decimal feet when using English units" option was unchecked and you were using English units, some of the data on the Duct Static Pressure Loss report would be blank.

4. Added the new Manual D Ductsize program.

5. Made improvements to the Proposal Maker program regarding zooming in and out and remembering your previous position in a document (see ReadmePM.doc file in your "C:\Program Files\Elite\Common\Document" folder).

Version 8.01.133 [9/12/2005]

1. Fixed a bug that developed in one of the recent updates that made it so the program would lock up if the Room Data window was open and you clicked one of the recent files at the bottom of the File menu to open another project.
   

Version 8.01.132 [8/14/2005]

1. Made the Number of Occurrences input on the Default Room Data window grayed out. This input now has no effect on new rooms created, as the default value is now always 1 at the time that a new room is created. This change eliminates a problem that could occur when the user inadvertently set this input on the Default Room Data window to zero, making new rooms default to occurring zero times and thus have no load.

2. Made it so the elevation-adjusted Recommended heating load is written to the project file for Audit to be able to read.

3. Modified the Import from Audit function to be able to import from project files that have been edited in Audit version 7.02.

4. Added the ARI reference number and qualifying tier to the things that can be imported from an Audit project.

Version 8.01.131 [7/1/2005]

1. Fixed a bug that developed in a recent build where the popup menu would not display when you right clicked a node on the Project Explorer.

2. Added a file needed by Drawing Board that had been taken out of the setup in one of the recent versions. This problem could affect first time installations of Rhvac.

Version 8.01.130 [6/23/2005]

1. Added the u-value of glass items to the end of the description in the Component Description column of the Building Load Summary and similar reports.

2. Fixed a bug that could blank out part of the reports if you had the Room Data window open, its Check Errors input set to Yes, and you had the Print Preview window already open and clicked its Refresh Reports button.

3. Added a blue caption bar on the left side of the Proposal Maker menus that get inserted into the main menu which shows that those menus are for the Proposal Maker window. Did the same thing for the Drawing Board menus.

4. Fixed a problem that developed in the previous build in the Rhvac Help window, where the buttons at the top of the Drawing Board tutorial window did not work.

Version 8.01.129 [6/2/2005] (First Release with Proposal Maker)

1. Added the ability to delete multiple items from the Organize Favorites (or Recent or Custom) dialogs by selecting multiple items and then clicking the Delete button. Hold the Ctrl key down and click to select individual items, or hold the Shift key down and click to select all items between the current item and the one you click.

2. Made more changes to Proposal Maker (see ReadmePM.doc file in your "C:\Program Files\Elite\Common\Document" folder).

3. Updated all the sample project files to include a proposal document.

4. Made it so the "Insert Blank Item" and "Remove Current Item" buttons on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window are disabled when the cursor is not within the inputs of an item.

Version 8.01.124 [5/27/2005] (Test Version)

1. Fixed a bug in the previous build that made it so if you clicked on an object on the Drawing Board drawing with a very fast click the mousepointer would be temporarily captured as if you were still holding the mouse button down. Also fixed the same kind of bug that could happen if you clicked with a very fast click on an object icon in the Catalog Browser, where the mousepointer symbol would retain the arrow and plus sign as if you were dragging the object from the catalog.

Version 8.01.122 [5/26/2005] (Test Version)

1. Added the Proposal Maker feature, which operates in functional demo mode until you purchase a separate license for it.

2. Made the Object Properties window in Drawing Board into a docked window. Also made the Catalog Browser into a docked window. These two windows can now be either floating or docked to the left or right side of the Drawing Board window.

3. Added some text about window wells to the error message that shows up in the Evaluation of Project window when a room has a below grade wall whose above grade area is too small for the windows or doors that reference it. The error message says to create an additional above grade wall with the same dimensions as the window, reference the window to that wall, and subtract the dimensions of that above grade wall from the dimensions entered for the below grade wall.

4. Fixed a problem where if the Print Preview window was already open and you clicked the Select Reports button or menu item, then clicked the Preview button on the Select Reports dialog to regenerate the reports, the Print Preview window would not be brought to the front.

5. On the Duct Load Factors dialog, made it so the Attic Ceiling Type input is grayed out and blank if the Duct Location input is not set to Attic.

6. Fixed a problem on the Room Load Summary report when the System Type input is set to Fixed and a System CFM has been entered. The "Htg Nom CFM" and "Clg Nom CFM" columns were showing each room's share of the fixed system CFM rather than the minimum required air to heat or cool the room. The "Air Sys CFM" column is the important one since it shows the actual CFM that will be delivered, but the other two CFM columns are useful so you can compare the minimum requirements vs. the actual.

7. Added error messages to the Evaluation of Project window to handle problems with the duct sizing inputs on the General Project Data window, such as the minimum height being greater than the maximum height.

8. Fixed a bug on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, where if the program was set to show feet and inches rather than decimal feet value (an option on the Rhvac Options dialog), the Equivalent Length box for an item that was a fitting could be blank.

9. Fixed a problem in importing data from Audit, where the system description was only copied to the Description inputs on the Equipment tab of the System Data window. Now it also copies the description to the System Name input.

10. Fixed a bug in the exporting of an EnergyGauge file, where if you had used a custom door in the project an error would show up in the Evaluation of Project window saying, "One or more non-standard floors were found," rather than "non-standard doors."

11. Added "ARI Reference Number" and "Qualifying Tier" inputs to the Equipment tab of the System Data window. Also added columns for these fields to the Find HVAC Equipment window.

Version 8.01.113 [4/7/2005]

1. Added a checkbox called "Manual Override" beside the "Percent of Total Load" inputs on the Duct Load Factors dialog to make it more obvious that it is possible to override the percentage duct loads.

2. Made it so when you drop a duct object on Drawing Board while in Rhvac or Chvac, the Sizing Method property defaults to PS for Presize. Also made it so trunks default to being rectangular and runouts to round under the same circumstances.

3. Added a message to the setup when an installation of Ductsize is detected to remind you to update it as well.

Version 8.01.112 [4/6/2005]

1. Made it so the duct sizing code will go ahead and use the smallest or largest duct in the schedule even if the velocity constraints are not met. This change applies to the duct sizing code for room runouts, the main trunk, and the Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

Version 8.01.111 [3/31/2005]

1. Added the following buttons and corresponding features to the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window's toolbar: "Copy Current Item to Clipboard," "Paste to Current Item," "Reset All Items," "Insert Blank Item Before Current Item," "Remove Current Item and Shift Below Items Up."

2. Made the first three items in the first path created on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calcuator default to having their Type set to Misc, Duct and Fitting.

3. Added the ability to delete the path when there is only one path. Doing so will automatically close the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

4. Updated the sample projects to include a couple of example paths on the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator.

Version 8.01.107 [3/14/2005]

1. Made it so if you have multiple zones within a system and you set the System Air Type for the system to Fixed, for the room CFM the program will use either the proportioned fixed CFM for the room or the peak fenestration gain (PFG) CFM for the room, whichever is greater.

Version 8.01.106 [3/14/2005]

1. Fixed a problem where it was possible for a message to appear in the Evaluation of Project window saying that a solution was not found for the duct loads even if you had selected to manually enter the percent loss or gain.

Version 8.01.105 [3/13/2005]

1. Fixed a bug that made the sensible gain and CFM values too low at the room and zone levels if a system had sensible gain due to ductwork and the rooms within the system were in multiple zones.

2. Added the ability to manually enter your own percentage loss and gain for the duct loads on the Duct Load Factors dialog. To use this feature, click the dropdown help button beside each of the "Percent of Total Load" inputs, select the "Manual" option, and enter the desired percentage.

3. Added a "Use CV if Multizone" option to the System Data window, which lets you specify that the system is a Constant Volume system even when you put the rooms into multiple zones. That makes it so you can put rooms into multiple zones so you can see the zone subtotals without having to assume that a VAV system will be used.

4. Added a "Help on Current Window" item to the toolbar and the Help menu. Clicking this item does the same thing as pressing F1, which opens the Rhvac Help window to a topic describing the active window.

5. Added a summary section to the end of the Duct Static Pressure Loss report that shows the path with the highest loss, and the largest and smallest duct diameters of all paths.

Version 8.01.103 [2/28/2005]

1. Fixed a bug that made it so if your design temperature difference in the summer was less than 10 degrees, the CLTD used for building components was too high. Implemented the Manual J procedure to use for this situation rather than an extrapolation of the CLTD tables.

2. Added a report for the new Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

3. Made more changes to the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window, including: modifying the duct sizing and static pressure summation code, making it so metric calculations work correctly, adding a "cm" option while in metric units to round to the nearest centimeter, modifying the way the list of fittings is displayed in the Fitting Selector dialog, modifying some of the fitting pictures, and adding the missing fitting descriptions.

Version 8.01.96 [2/3/2005] (Test Version)

1. Made more changes to the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

Version 8.01.95 [2/2/2005] (Test Version)

1. Made changes to the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

Version 8.01.94 [2/1/2005] (Test Version)

1. Added the Duct Static Pressure Loss Calculator window.

Version 8.01.93 [1/21/2005]

1. Modified some of the captions on the Duct Load Factors dialog to make it more clear that even if you enter data for more than one scenario, the data for the scenarios apply only to the current system.

2. Made it so you can use custom glass items for a project that you want to export to FlaRes/Engauge.

3. Added a list of user-defined overhang projection and offset values to the dropdown help window for those inputs on the Room Data window and for those properties on the Object Properties window of Drawing Board.

Version 8.01.92 [12/22/2004]

1. Fixed a bug that made it so when you had rooms in multiple zones within the same system, the sensible gain total at the room level was incorrect and too high because it included non-glass envelope sensible gains twice. The system and building level sensible gains were not affected.

Version 8.01.90 [12/18/2004]

1. Added a Line Spacing input to the Select Reports dialog, which lets you set the spacing in between lines on the printed reports.

2. For Drawing Board, made it so when you export a wmf or other file through the "File | Export | From Drawing" feature, only the visible parts of the drawing are exported.

3. Added a tooltip to the Object Properties window in Drawing Board that lets you see the entire property value when the text width is wider than the space available.

4. Added an "HVAC Equipment Databases" tab to the Elite Software Update Manager program, which lets you see if any of the equipment database files in your Elite\Common folder are out of date and need to be updated. Also added a menu item in Rhvac's help menu to open the Update Manager with the new tab selected. Also added a way to open it from the Find HVAC Equipment window's dropdown help for its Filename input.

Version 8.01.87 [11/5/2004]

1. Fixed a bug that would happen on Korean or other Double Byte Character Set versions of Windows, where data on some of the windows would be corrupted after you saved the project.

2. Fixed a bug that was introduced two months ago, where your report selections on the Select Reports dialog would not be preserved after reinstalling or updating.

Version 8.01.86 [10/22/2004]

1. Fixed a bug that made it so the program could lock up after executing Drawing Board's Undo feature.

Version 8.01.85 [10/14/2004]

1. Fixed a bug where if you had entered system numbers in your rooms that are higher than the number of systems you had created on the System Data window, during the calculations it was possible for the program to create more systems than were needed. Now it will create only as many new systems as needed to match the highest system number you entered for a room.

2. Made it so the new, iterative duct load calculations for Manual J Addendum C are much more likely to find a solution for any project, so that the "iterative solution not found" message does not show up in the Evaluation of Project window.

3. Fixed a bug on the REScheck file export, where the exported insulation depth for basement walls was supposed to be the entire wall height and not just the depth of the insulation below grade. Also made other changes regarding the export of basement walls, including if a basement wall is less than 50% below grade it will be exported as an above grade wall (a warning message is given that explains that).

4. Fixed a bug on the Miscellaneous report, where the volume used in finding the infiltration air changes per hour was supposed to be only the above grade volume. For projects with any below grade volume, the air changes per hour value shown here would be smaller than what you entered on the System Data window.

5. Corrected the weather data for Fort Knox, Kentucky as follows: elevation from 75 to 753; degrees latitude from 38 to 37; winter dry bulb from 7 to 15; summer dry bulb from 90 to 92; wet bulb from 75 to 74.

Version 8.01.81 [9/29/2004]

1. Made a modification to the duct load calculations so that if both supply and return ducts are in the conditioned space the Evaluation of Project window will not report a warning about not being able to find an iterative solution. Also made it so if both supply and return ducts of the first scenario for a system are in a conditioned space it won't show the warning about not having any duct surface area.

2. Fixed a bug introduced last month that made it so the radiant floor calculations were not being done. If you selected the Radiant Floor report it would always be blank.

Version 8.01.79 [9/9/2004]

1. Made it so the new duct load calculations will zero out the supply leakage rate in the calculations if the supply ducts are located in a conditioned space. Did the same for the return side.

Version 8.01.78 [9/8/2004]

1. First public release that includes the new feature of exporting a REM/Rate file. The new "Create REM/Rate File" dialog lets you create a file with the extension xrr, which can then be imported into the REM/Rate program (a version 11.4 of REM/Rate will be released very soon that can read this xrr transfer file). Click the menu "File | Export | REM/Rate File" to open the dialog that lets you specify where to save the file.

Version 8.01.77 [9/3/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Fixed a problem in the REM/Rate export file.

Version 8.01.76 [9/3/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Corrected the warning messages that say that a skylight will be ignored because its tilt does not match the roof it's in, where it had been saying, "GLASS 1 SI - Direction..." instead of just "GLASS 1 Direction..."

2. Made another refinement to the possible error messages that can be reported if the duct load calculations cannot reach a solution, where it specifically tells you whether the cause is because the supply or return side leakage rate is greater than that of the supply CFM.

3. Fixed a small bug on the AED graph report where the values plotted on the graph for the average and hourly glass gains were still in English units if the project was set to metric units.

4. Made more changes to the REM/Rate export file.

Version 8.01.73 [9/1/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Made it so if the duct load calculation engine does not find an iterative solution for a system's duct gain or loss, it sets the duct gain or loss to zero for that system and adds a warning to the Evaluation of Project window telling you that no solution was found. Also added a message along with an asterisk before the values in the Results section of the Duct Load Factors dialog whenever no iterative solution was found for duct loss or gain. And made it so the Evaluation of Project window will open when you click the Calculate button on the Duct Load Factors window if either the heating or cooling duct load calculations could not find a solution.

2. Made it so the default filename for new projects shown in the "Copy This File" input on the New Projects tab of the Rhvac Options dialog is not changed when you reinstall or install an update. Also made it so the title page picture filename is not changed when you reinstall or install an update.

3. Added some entries to the REM/Rate export file and fixed some bugs in the export code.

4. Updated the help file to include a topic for the new REM/Rate dialog.

Version 8.01.71 [8/30/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Fixed a bug in the creation of the REM/Rate file, where the entry in the Windows section of that file was always zero when the referenced wall was above grade.

Version 8.01.68 [8/28/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Added a "Create REM/Rate File" feature that lets you create a file with the extension xrr, which can be imported into the REM/Rate program. Click the menu "File | Export | REM/Rate File" to open the dialog that lets you specify where to save the file.

Version 8.01.67 [8/25/2004]

1. Made further changes related to Addendum C, including making corrections to the duct load calculations, updating the help file, adding a line for Duct Loads to the Load Preview window and corresponding report, changing the display of the Duct Load Factors input on the System Data window to indicate whether duct surface areas have been entered or not, modifying the appearance of the Duct Load Factors dialog, and adding an option to the Rhvac Options dialog to let you decide whether or not you want to be warned whenever a system has zero duct loads.

2. Got rid of the extraneous "Warning" text on the Evaluation of Project and Evaluation of Room windows. There were some warnings for which the word "Warning" would appear twice. Made it so each warning is preceded by ">>" in bold font.

3. Added the ability to zoom in or out on the Drawing Board window by scrolling the mousewheel up or down. And it zooms in such a way that wherever the mousepointer is on the drawing it will remain at that same point on the drawing as the zoom changes. Also, you can now pan the drawing by holding down on the mousewheel button and dragging. These features are available at any time, including when you are in one of the zooming modes (zoom in/out mode or zoom rectangle mode).

Version 8.01.59 [6/29/2004]

1. Implemented the new infiltration tables from Manual J's recently published Addendum D. There are now five categories of construction tightness from which to choose. Fireplaces no longer have an effect on the summer infiltration, and their effect in the winter is reduced. For descriptions of the five levels of construction tightness, see the Construction Tightness topic in the Rhvac Help window.

Version 8.01.58 [6/26/2004]

1. Implemented the hourly fenestration gain (HFG) procedure from the recently printed Addendum B for Manual J. The HFG procedure is now used to calculate the room sensible gain and supply CFM for rooms in a multizone system (whenever you enter different values for the Zone Number input for rooms in the same system). The hour used for the room sensible gain is the one in which the zone that the room is in peaks. That sensible gain is called the peak fenestration gain (PFG). The sensible gain for walls is now always based on the CLTD values from the table for the average load procedure, Table 4B. Table 4C is no longer used.

2. Also implemented from Addendum B are the System Concept Warnings, which are messages that let you know when a system has an "excursion" as a result of not having adequate exposure diversity. There are two different warnings: one for slight excursion and one for more severe. These warnings will be displayed in the Evaluation of Project window whenever a system in your project has some degree of excursion. They are displayed by default but can be turned off by unchecking a box on the General tab of the Rhvac Options dialog.

3. Fixed a bug where opening the Room Data window would make the project appear to be modified and in need of being saved.

Version 8.01.55 [6/1/2004]

1. Made it so the Project Title input accepts up to 80 characters rather than just 40.

2. Made it so if you type in a semicolon in the project title the part after the semicolon will appear on a second line of text on the right hand side of the page header on the reports.

3. Fixed a bug where room CFM data for importing into Ductsize would not be written to the project file unless the Rhvac project was set to calculate runout duct sizes.

4. Fixed a bug in the creation of the REScheck file where a window could be incorrectly exported as a glass door. Also made it so glass doors are exported as doors, as expected by REScheck.

5. Added a warning after the creation of any REScheck file that tells you to verify the R-values and other data for the building components.

Version 8.01.53 [5/22/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. On the Wall Material and other material dialogs, made it so if you click one of the column headers in the bottom list and then click on the middle category list, the items in the bottom list will again be shown in their original order as they appear in Manual J.

2. Fixed a bug in the creation of the EnergyGauge file where it was possible for a wall's R-value to not be determined and exported correctly.

3. Added an option to the General tab of the Select Reports dialog that lets you choose whether or not to include the project filename as the first line of the Project Report.

4. Made improvements to the REScheck export feature.

Version 8.01.50 [4/29/2004] (Not Publicly Released)

1. Fixed a bug on the Background tab of the Rhvac Options dialog where the part of the monitor picture that represents the background would not be the right size and position when the Windows display DPI setting was set to a value larger than normal (or, under some versions of Windows other than XP, when the Large Fonts settings was used).

2. Fixed a bug where if you pressed F7 while in Drawing Board mode the Global Material Change dialog would show up but would not make any changes to the drawing itself. To show the Global Material Change dialog for a Drawing Board project, you must right click a Room object and click "Global Material Change."

3. Fixed a bug where it was possible to change the value of read-only properties on the Object Properties window of Drawing Board.

4. Fixed a bug where the "Print Selected Pages" dialog would not display its information correctly on a DBCS version of Windows such as a Korean or Japanese version.

5. Added a button to the Print Preview window's toolbar that lets you save the document as a PDF file.

6. Added the ability to zoom, scroll and navigate the print preview with the mouse wheel. Rolling the mouse wheel scrolls the report up or down. If you use the mouse wheel to scroll to the top or bottom of the page and keep rolling, the preview will go to the previous or next page. Holding down the Shift key and rolling the mouse wheel navigates to the previous or next page. Holding down the Ctrl key while rolling the mouse wheel zooms in or out.

7. Fixed a bug where the "Roof Slope (Intrinsic)" property would no longer have a dropdown help window after you closed and reopened a drawing.

8. Added REScheck file export, which is not finished yet.

Version 8.01.49 [2/10/2004]

1. Fixed a bug where the Zone report would not be included in the reports unless you also checked the box for the System report.

2. Fixed a problem where the floor depth was not included in the descriptions of the basement walls that begin with "15A" but have more than three characters before the first dash ("-").

3. Fixed a bug in the automatic calculation (estimation) of the above grade volume of a room where no distinction was made about a partition wall. Now the program excludes partition walls when it makes this calculation.

Version 8.01.47 [1/23/2004]

1. Made it so if you have a partition wall that has the same construction number as another non-partition wall in the project, the partition wall and its description are given a separate listing on the building, system and zone Summary Loads reports.

2. Fixed bugs related to having a glass or other material in your Favorites list but no longer in your Custom list. If you typed in the material on the Room Data window it would not automatically look up the u-value and other information about that Favorite. When you selected that glass on the Glass Material dialog by double clicking the Favorites list, you could get the wrong u-value and SHGC for that glass (not all of the the quantities in the bottom list would be right).

3. Added a shortcut key (underlined character) to each of the buttons on the various Organize Favorites (or Custom or Recent) dialogs. This change makes it so you can quickly move an item to the top of the list by holding down Alt+U, or to the bottom of the list by holding down Alt+D.

4. Added a "Copy License File" button to the About box. Clicking this button displays a Browse for Folder dialog that lets you select the floppy drive or any other location from which you want to copy the program's license file.

Version 8.01.45 [1/1/2004]

1. Modified the calculations to accommodate the recent changes to Manual J Eighth Edition (version 1.20.0 of that publication). You no longer have to choose between the Average or Peak load method for the system and for the rooms (the "Calc Methods" input on the System Data window has been removed). If the system does not have AED, the amount by which the peak glass load exceeds 30% above the average glass load, called the "AED Excursion," is added as a system level load for sizing the equipment. The peak load method is now only used at the room level and only when you have a multizone system (when you have rooms in a system that are in more than one zone).

2. Added a row to the Load Preview window to show the ventilation gains and losses, when present. This new row of data appears just under the System row when applicable. Also added a row when applicable for each of the other system level loads that are not included at the room or zone level, including fan blower gain, AED excursion, winter humidification load and hot water piping load. Also made all of these same changes to the Load Preview Report.

3. Added the system level loads mentioned above to the building and system level pie charts and bar graphs, as well as the Room Load Summary report.

4. Added a line to the Room Load Summary report when there are multiple zones to explain why the sum of the cooling room CFM and sensible gains do not match the system totals for these quantities (the Peak Load Procedure is used to determine room-level sensible gains for walls and glass).

5. Made it so the picture of the monitor on the Background tab of the Rhvac Options dialog displays properly when the Windows display theme is set to show 3-D objects in a color other than gray.

6. Fixed a bug where the Client and Company information would not show up on the right pane of the Project Explorer window upon selecting the building node for a project in the left pane.

7. Fixed a bug on the Glass Material dialog where it was possible for the Glazing Arrangement value for a glass to not be copied. This value affects the determination of the effect that an interior shading device has.

8. Added an option to the Rhvac Options dialog called "Automatically insert extended data when typing in a Favorite material." This feature lets you type in a glass material code into the Room Data window and if that glass is in your Favorites list, the interior shading device, insect screen, and all of the unseen data listed under Glass Options will automatically be copied to the current glass. The feature also works for floors and roofs, where the extended data consists of the floor covering or the roof material and color. This feature also works when typing in a material code on the Object Properties window of Drawing Board.

9. Fixed a bug where if you selected "Yes" for the "Do Winter Humidification" input on the System Data window the individual room heating CFM values would not be correct.

Version 8.01.37 [11/28/2003]

1. Fixed a bug where it was possible under certain circumstances for the number of registers calculated for a room to not be based on the CFM per runout value that you entered on the General Project Data.

2. Made it so the calculation of the number of registers for a room uses the CFM per runout value entered on the General Project Data as a target rather than a maximum.

Version 8.01.35 [11/11/2003]

1. Made it so when you type a partial city name into the Reference City input on the General Project Data window, the program only searches for city names that begin with the characters you type, rather than ones where those characters are contained anywhere within the city, state or country name.

2. Fixed a bug that made it so the values shown on the reports for the building level of CFM per square foot, square foot per ton and air turnover rate would be wrong if there were more than one system in the project.

Version 8.01.34 [8/7/2003]

1. Fixed a minor bug on the Glass Material dialog when displayed from Drawing Board.

2. Lowered the minimum indoor winter temperature from 45 to 33 degrees.

Version 8.01.33 [7/22/2003]

1. Fixed a bug where the Glass Material dialog would unload if you pressed Escape while one of the Glass Options dropdown help windows was visible. Now if there is a dropdown help window open pressing Escape will just close that window.

2. Corrected the way the wall R-values are assigned in the exported dat file for the Florida EnergyGauge program. Formerly, the program had been simply writing the inverse of the u-value of the wall as the R-value, but the Florida program is expecting to see the rating of only the insulation itself and not the R-value of the entire wall. So now the program writes only the rating of the insulation. If there is both batt and board insulation, the sum of the two is used. Did the same for floors and roofs.

Version 8.01.32 [7/7/2003]

1. Added the ability to sort the items in the bottom list on the material dialogs by clicking on the column header. An up or down arrow is displayed in the appropriate column header to indicate the sort direction.

2. Added an up or down arrow to the column headers on the Find HVAC Equipment window and the projects list on the New Project dialog to indicate the sort column and the direction of the sort.

3. Fixed a bug where if you clicked the Modified column on the New Project dialog in order to sort the projects by date, the items were not sorted correctly.

Version 8.01.29 [7/1/2003]

1. Corrected the display of some of the text in the dropdown help on the Radiant Floor Properties dialog.

2. Fixed a small bug where upon first opening the Room Name Options dialog on Drawing Board, a room in the list other than the currently selected room would sometimes be the one with the check mark.

3. Fixed a bug that made it so the glass options were not reset to the default values when using the "Delete Component" feature on the Room Data window to blank out a glass item.

4. Fixed a bug that made it so the wrong direction could be reported for a window item on the Detailed Room Loads report if any of the walls before the one that the window referenced were not valid. For example, if Wall 1 on the Room Data window was blank, Wall 2 had a valid wall entered for it and you entered 2 in the Ref input for a glass item to indicate that the window was located in Wall 2, the report would not show the correct direction for that window on the report.

5. Added a "Folders" tab to the Rhvac Options dialog, where you can set the folder locations for the Favorites, Recent and Custom materials.

Version 8.01.27 [5/22/2003]

1. Made corrections to a few of the entries in some of the data tables, based on corrections that ACCA recently made to the printed tables in Manual J. One was the west-facing AED glass cooling load factors for glass with internal shade. Another was a correction to the crawl space wall u-value for floors of type 19B.

2. Modified the Ventilation Requirement dialog due to a change in the Manual J procedure. The ventilation requirement is now equal to the outside air requirement minus the smaller of the cooling infiltration CFM or half of the heating infiltration CFM.

3. Added Enter and arrow key navigation to the inputs on the Ventilation Requirement dialog.

4. Corrected a problem where the u-values for windows with a metal frame with no break and those with a metal frame with thermal break were reversed. This problem was in glass materials that begin with 2 and 3.

Version 8.01.26 [4/28/2003]

1. Made it so the sliders that separate the lists on the floor, roof, wall, glass and door material dialogs remember their positions the next time you open the dialog.

2. Fixed a bug where if the current project was set to use metric units, when you opened the Find HVAC Equipment window from one of the dropdown help windows on the Equipment tab of the System Data window, the min and max capacity ranges would not be set correctly.

3. Made it so you can delete instances of a material with the Global Material Change dialog by blanking out the input where the new material is shown.

4. Made it so the Global Material Change dialog is disabled while the Floor Material and other material dialogs are open after you have clicked the dropdown help button beside the input where the new material is shown.

5. Changed the captions for the commands in the right click popup menu for the North Arrow figure on Drawing Board so that they say "Up," "Upper Right," etc., instead of "N," "NE," etc..

Version 8.01.25 [4/10/2003]

1. Added a link in the "Elite Software on the Web" menu to the Rhvac Update page.

2. Updated the help file to include information about the Radiant Floor Properties dialog, the Action menu etc..

3. Updated the way Adequate Exposure Diversity (AED) is calculated so that the threshold of the average glass load exceeding the peak is always 30 percent and the orientation of the building is not considered. Formerly, the definition of AED included the stipulation that if the building was on the N, E, S, W rosette, the system would not have AED if the peak glass load exceeded the average glass load by more than 20 percent.

4. Changed the default for the "Calc Methods" input on the System Data window so that "Avg/Avg" is the default method for new systems and for new projects.

5. Fixed a bug where the default floor, roof and other data would not get completely filled in when creating a new room when not in Drawing Board mode, if options were set to automatically copy default components into the components of new rooms.

6. Changed the default for the "Warn when calculation method should change" checkbox on the Rhvac Options dialog to being unchecked for a first time installation.

Version 8.01.23 [3/25/2003]

NOTE: If you use Drawing Board with Ductsize or Chvac you will need to install today's update for those programs along with this update.

1. Corrected the reversed summer outdoor dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures for Tallahassee, Florida in the weather database.

2. Added a "None" option at the top of the duct table input's dropdown help on the Duct Load Factors dialog to represent ducts in a conditioned space. Selecting this option makes all of the factors go to zero.

3. Technical changes related to Drawing Board.

Version 8.01.22 [3/17/2003]

1. Fixed a bug on Skylight objects on Drawing Board where the Glass Material dialog always showed zero for the skylight tilt in the Tilt input if you opened that dialog by clicking the dropdown help button for the Material property.

2. Changed the name of the "Rhvac Drawing Colors" dialog in Drawing Board to "Rhvac Drawing Options" and made it so you can set the default fill color, fill style, line color and line style properties for various Rhvac objects.

3. Added "Single French Door" and "Double French Door" objects to the Rhvac Drawing Objects catalog in Drawing Board. Also added those options to the right click menu for glass objects. And added "Swap Hinge Side" and "Reverse Swing" commands to the glass object's right click menu when appropriate.

4. Added "Reverse Panels" and "Swap Opening End" commands to the popup menu that appears when you right click a sliding glass door object on Drawing Board.

5. In the Rhvac Drawing Objects catalog in Drawing Board, added several different Room objects that have some walls already set to being interior.

6. Made it so the Global Material Change dialog works with Drawing Board. Right click a Room object and select "Global Material Change..." to use this feature.

Version 8.01.21 [3/12/2003]

1. Added an About Drawing Board item to the Help menu so you can see the license level, the company headings and the version number.

2. Fixed a bug where it was possible for the drawing file of a project to be deleted under certain circumstances.

Version 8.01.19 [3/10/2003]

1. Added arrow and Enter key navigation to inputs on the Duct Load Factors dialog.

2. Added a Radiant Floor Properties dialog that lets you enter radiant floor data on a room by room basis. Open this dialog by clicking the new "Rad.F" input at the bottom right corner of the Room Data window or by clicking the dropdown help button beside the new Radiant Floor Heat Output property of the Room object in Drawing Board. Also added a Radiant Floor Report.

3. Fixed a bug where if the Default Room Data window was open and you checked the "Copy the above settings to each new room" on the Duct Load Factors dialog while setting properties for the Room Object on Drawing Board, the Default Room Data window would not see the new settings.

Version 8.01.13 [2/20/2003]

1. Fixed a bug in the installation program that made it so the "AutoLoad MJ8.rhv" file would get overwritten if it already existed in the Projects folder.

2. On the General tab of the Select Reports window, made it so you can uncheck both the "Show net tonnage" and "Show recommended tonnage" boxes in order to not show any tonnage value at all in the "Building Loads," "System Loads" and "Zone Loads" sections of the reports.

3. Fixed a bug on Drawing Board that would mess up a Container object (including many of those in the Furniture and similar catalogs) when you right clicked the object and clicked "Edit Objects Inside Container."

Version 8.01.12 [2/15/2003]

1. Fixed a bug that was introduced in a recent version that made it so the program would lock up when you clicked OK on the Import From Audit dialog.

Version 8.01.11 [2/15/2003]

1. Updated the Drawing Board help file with information about the new Undo feature.

2. Made it so the Undo dialog for Drawing Board does not show up in the Windows taskbar.

Version 8.01.10 [2/14/2003]

1. Fixed a bug where if you entered -1 for the number of registers on the Room Data window, the number of registers shown on the reports for that room would not always remain at zero.

2. Added an Undo feature to the Drawing Board window. Click the menu "Edit | Undo..." while the Drawing Board window is active to open the new Undo dialog, which lets you undo as many changes as you want. There is also a new "Maximum Undo Operations" input on the Drawing Board Options dialog (click "View | Drawing Board Options"), which lets you determine the maximum number of changes you can undo in any drawing session. And there is a new option in the list on that dialog called "Enable the Undo feature," which lets you turn off the Undo feature in order to speed the drawing window's behavior up a little.

3. Fixed a bug on the Import From Rhvac dialog where if you checked any of the rooms in the other project to be imported, they would all be imported rather than just the ones you checked.

Version 8.01.5 [2/4/2003]

1. Added more to the descriptions for sub-category 21B floors to indicate that the width dimension given in the description is for the shortest side of the floor slab (only 21A's had been modified in version 8.01.3).

2. Made it so rooms drawn on the Drawing Board window show up in the order in which they were created even if there are multiple sheets.

3. Made it so the drawing writes its data to the project file faster, especially when there are several rooms.

4. Changed the function of the ventilation input on the Room Data window so that if the total amount of ventilation CFM you enter for the rooms exceeds the amount entered for the system, the program will use the total amount entered for the rooms as the system ventilation CFM.

5. Made it so the names of the Desktop and Start menu shortcuts that the installation program creates include the version number of the program.

6. Corrected a mistake in the dropdown help for the partition temperature difference inputs, where STD and WTD were reversed in one sentence.

7. Made it so you can enter -1 for the STD property for a wall on Drawing Board to indicate that the summer temperature difference across the partition is the same as that of a north-facing or shaded wall. Also changed the dropdown help for this property to explain that.

8. Fixed a bug where several of the properties of the Room object were not being set to the Default Room Data settings when you drag and drop a room onto the drawing. These included the default values for the floor category, roof category, duct latent gain, etc..

9. Made it so version 6.07 and 6.08 projects can be opened even if version 6.08 is not installed.

Version 8.01.3 [12/30/2002]

1. Made it so the DucDraw1.ocx file and its catalog file only get installed if Ductsize is not installed in order to avoid conflicts with that program.

2. Added a Custom tab to the Favorites and Recent tabs at the top of each of the material dialogs.

3. Added more text to the descriptions of the basement floor categories and to the individual floors.

4. Added example custom materials to each of the material types.

5. Fixed a bug that would cause an Overflow error in the Evaluation of Project window if you started a blank project, opened the Room Data window and clicked Evaluate Project.

6. Fixed a bug where the Wall Material dialog would only set one wall's Material property if you had selected multiple walls on the Drawing Board window. The same goes for floors, roofs, glass and doors. Fixed the same sort of bug where if you selected multiple Room objects, the Duct Load Factors dialog would only set the properties for one room.

7. Fixed a bug where the inputs on the Room Data window for the duct gain and loss multipliers and the duct latent gain could appear enabled even while the project was in Drawing Board mode. You could not actually click in the inputs, but they were not properly grayed out.

Version 8.01.0 [12/26/2002] (Initial Release)

1. Corrected a problem where a few of the below grade wall material codes were repeated.

2. Fixed a bug where the copy and paste function on the Project Explorer did not work for the project data.

3. Continued updating the help file.

4. Changed the automatic calculation of duct gain and loss multipliers on the Default Room window so that the Default Room's area is used by itself.

5. Fixed a bug where the winter room CFM would be incorrect if there were hot water piping load. Also fixed a bug where the summer room CFM would be incorrect if there was any blower power sensible gain.

6. Added lines to the Room Load Summary report for blower power, hot water piping load and ventilation loads. If any of these loads are present, a line for each load will be added before line that shows the system totals.

7. Made it so topics in the help file for the inputs on the System Data window are linked with the individual inputs, so that when you press F1 while the focus is on one of those inputs the Rhvac Help window will open with the appropriate topic already showing.

8. Made it so if a door has as its reference a partition wall that has -1 for the summer temperature difference, the design temperature difference is used to find that door's sensible gain.

Version 8.00.38 [12/14/2002] (Beta 3)

1. See the "Readme MJ8.doc" file for details on the changes in Beta 3.