With this function you can transfer an existing construction to flixoAT (or to flixo Professional) to conduct a thermal analysis. After the computation with flixoAT you can transfer a block with the temperature trace to ATHENA and insert it into the current drawing.
The material parameters required for the computation (thermal conductivity λ) are, where they are established by ATHENA materials or layers, passed on to flixoAT. You can manually enter missing values or select them from the extensive database included in flixoAT. In order that material values are automatically transferred to flixoAT, one of the three following conditions must be fulfilled:
• You assign a type of material to an ATHENA object (e.g. thermal insulation).
• You assign to a block an attribute name "mat", the attribute value of which is identical to the name (the "logical" name, not the designation) of a material.
• You assign to an object a layer, the name of which corresponds to the name (the "logical" name, not the designation) of a material.
In each of the three cases a specific material parameter for the thermal conductivity must be assigned to the material.
You will find information on the management of materials and material values in ATHENA in the Chapters Material and Physical values.
Preparing the drawing for thermal analysis
With the transfer of a construction from ATHENA to flixoAT each sub-area is assigned the specific thermal conductivity depending on its layer. Therefore, problems can arise with open outlines and single lines. It is also important that the lines of adjacent constituent parts of the construction lie exactly one above the other.
All constituent parts of the construction consisting of the same material must lie on the same layer.
For the thermal analysis only the actual cut construction should be visible. This means that the lines superfluous for the computation, such as face edges and local constituent parts of the construction are to be deleted (provided the computation is not to take place at just this point).
Areas in the construction, which are enclosed by two layers, are defined as cavities. Cavities must really be closed (e.g. the sealing lips of the EPDM seals must be brought up to the edge of the glass).
The drawing elements superfluous to the thermal analysis, such as standard parts, dimensions and hatching, are automatically filtered out during the transfer of the drawing from to ATHENA flixoAT.
ath_flixo_schnitt
Wall connection
ath_flixo_detail
Detail of EPDM seal on a glass infill, closed cavities.
Input request
Specify corner point or [Settings/?]:
Specify the first corner point of the arrangement to be computed.
Specify the diagonal corner point of the arrangement to be computed.
Specify temperature in °C or [?] <20>:
Specify the temperature for the region outlined in green by ATHENA.
Press the Enter key to accept the default temperature.
Specify temperature in °C or [?] <20>:
Specify the temperature for the region outlined in green by ATHENA.
Specify pitch size or [?] <4>:
Enter the pitch size (mm) for the color scale of the temperature variation. The smaller the pitch size, the finer the temperature variation. Since the pitch size also has an effect on the speed of transfer, we recommend acceptance of the default value.
Option Settings
Dialog box Heat transmission settings
db_ath_flixo
In this dialog box you can select the required temperature unit from the list. When you activate the option flixoAT in the Palette section, ATHENA uses the same colors as flixoAT for the temperature variation. If you activate ATHENA, ATHENA uses the colors defined in the section Color values ATHENA for the temperature variation. You can assign colors to the various temperatures in the section Color values ATHENA. To do this click a color field with the mouse and then select a color in the following dialog box. When you click the button Save settings, ATHENA saves the changes. Otherwise the changes are only valid for the duration of the drawing session. If you click the button Default, the settings in the dialog box are reset to the last saved settings. If you click the Fill button, you can specify a color for all temperature values. You can then select a different color for a certain temperature (e.g. 10° isothermal) to highlight this temperature curve.
Click OK to save the settings for the duration of the drawing session. Click Cancel to discard the settings. ATHENA terminates the dialog box and continues with the input request: Specify corner point or [Settings/?]: (see syntax above).
Note
• flixoAT is a light version of the thermal analysis and reporting program "flixo Professional" and is installed with ATHENA. You will find detailed information about its operation in the flixoAT documentation.
• If you have installed flixo Professional, you can use it instead of flixoAT. ATHENA transfers the data to the flixo version which was last started.
• You will find further information about colors and color selection in your AutoCAD documentation.
Note: This function for conducting a thermal analysis is an aid for the user. CAD-PLAN GmbH can in no way be held liable for the results and any errors and losses arising from it.
