In Naviate HVAC & Plumbing there has for a long time been a very precise calculation of pressure drop and sound for ventilation systems. The limitation for many has been available components to use in the product.
With Part Maker it is now possible to add your own valves and equipment that can use Naviate's calculation. The family you add can be from a manufacturer you download from the web, or it can be something you have created yourself.
The folder structure is based on the type of system the valve should represent (Supply, Return or Exhaust) and is one of the requirements for the function to work. The folder structure is recreated either by doing it manually or alternatively you are asked to generate this when starting the function and the family is not in the correct hierarchy.
Once this is done, you can start looking more closely at the interface to add information about pressure drop and sound (the function can be activated in the family or in the project).
At this point, you enter the information about the manufacturer, model, category and types, and define where the family is retrieved from on your PC.
You also have the option to change the name of the different types.
Now that this is done, we will start adding the information about sound and pressure drop, this requires basic PC skills and focus. We start by finding a picture of the pressure drop diagram of the valve, this we will use to define pressure drop based on opening.
Based on the diagram information, enter data on the minimum and maximum air flow, as well as pressure information.
Finally, we add lines that represent the pressure drop curves, the same is repeated for sound. The method for creating the lines is by clicking from "a" to "b" in the diagram for each curve. The image of the diagram acts as a kind of template and is not visible when used by the families.
With this feature we hope to aid our customer in projects that need special or custom families and still be able to calculate pressure loss and sound.