Weather Tool

Complete visualisation and analysis program for hourly climate data. It recognises a wide range of international weather file formats as well as allowing users to specify customised data import formats for ASCII files. It also provides a wide range of display options, including both 2D and 3D graphs as well as wind roses and sun-path diagrams.

Add to this full psychrometric and bio climatic analysis and you have a unique mechanism for assessing the relative potential of different passive design systems. Add solar radiation analysis and you can then accurately determine optimum orientations for specific building design criteria. The result is a comprehensive pre-design climate/site analysis tool. Screen Shots

Keywords

weather data visualization, psychrometry, passive design analysis, optimum orientiation, data synthesis

Validation/Testing

N/A

Expertise Required

Minimum level of computer literacy required.

Users

Over 200 users world wide.

Audience

Architects, engineers & building designers, any one who needs to analyse climate data. Particularly good for initial climate/site analysis.

Input

The following are predefined data formats:

• TMY Climate Data (TMY)
• TMY2 Climate Data (TM2)
• TRNSYS TMY Variant (TRY)
• Aus. BOM Hourly Data (LST)
• CSIRO Weather Data (DAT)
• NatHERS Climate Data
• ASHRAE WYEC2 Data
• The Weather Tool v1.10

Output

The Weather Tool has it's own unique form of 3D graphing as well as standard 2D climate summary graphs, sun-path diagrams, psychrometric chart and wind frequency, for hourly, weekly and monthly time frames. All of which can be saved as Metafiles, Bitmaps or tabulated data.

Computer Platform

Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 & XP (Can also run on Virtual PC for the Mac)

Programming Language

C++

Strengths

Can import any type of ASCII data, either by using one of the predefined formats or by customising your own import format. Even if your weather data is incomplete, The Weather Tool can synthesize or rescale the data, as well as allow manual editing if required.

Weaknesses

Help file is limited at this stage. Tutorials are on their way.

Contact

Availability

A shareware version of The Weather Tool can be downloaded from the Square One web site. Go to SOFTWARE > STORE > Price List in the main menu of the Square One web site for the latest price/licensing information. Prices start from US$40 for a student licence.

Printable Version