HVAC System Maintenance Tips

HVAC System Maintenance: 6 Tips for Hot Season

As a building or property manager, it’s your job to maintain a safe and comfortable environment for everyone working or living in the building. The quickest way to get people complaining is to mess with the temperature.

Don’t leave your tenants out in the cold. Instead, be proactive and make sure your HVAC system is properly maintained. Your reputation depends on people knowing they can rely on you to keep the building running smoothly.

Also, it’s easier to fix problems before they become emergencies. This season, make HVAC system maintenance a priority so you can be sure your heating will keep working when you need it most.

6 essential HVAC system maintenance tasks for heating equipment

1. Clean or replace air filters

When it comes to HVAC system maintenance, cleaning the air filters is a no-brainer. It’s one of the simplest things that you can do yourself that has a big impact on how well the system works. When an air filter becomes clogged with dust and particulates, the lack of airflow forces the equipment to work harder and use more energy to achieve the same temperatures.

Clogged filters can also result in more dust and pollen in the air, which can worsen health conditions for people with asthma and allergies. Plus, more dust and debris gets into your equipment and can cause damage over time.

2. Have the ventilation system checked

The ductwork that moves heated air throughout the building, and the flues that vent exhaust out, are the most overlooked parts of the HVAC system. Don’t let it be out of sight, out of mind. Have an expert check the ducts and vents for any dislocated parts, clogs, holes, or corrosion, so you can correct any problems that impact your comfort conditions (and energy usage).

Ductwork repair might seem like an easy enough task to tackle yourself, but it’s not recommended. Many DIY repair attempts end up damaging the equipment. Get a professional HVAC tech in to assess and repair a structural issue or blocked flue.

3. Clean exterior components

When it comes to HVAC system maintenance, your system’s exterior components (such as condensers and rooftop units) need as much attention as your as the interior units. Possibly even more so, as the outdoor units are exposed to the elements.

Make sure to keep outdoor equipment unit clear of leaves and snow, especially after a storm. Pay special attention to the area around the outdoor air intake. This supplies air for the whole system, so if there’s any blockage or source of contamination nearby, this can affect the air in the whole building. It’s recommended to maintain at least a two foot clearance from the intake valve.

Your HVAC maintenance plan should include cleaning outdoor components at least a couple of times each year. The coils, motors, and fan blades operate more efficiently when cleaned.

4. Keep an eye out for mold

Where there is moisture, there is the potential for mold to grow. To prevent mold, keep an eye out for any signs of moisture where it doesn’t belong. It can be difficult to get rid of, not to mention the potential health hazards for the people in your building.

A good HVAC system maintenance plan will focus on inspecting the most common places where moisture can build up. These include boilers, ventilation shafts, coils, drain lines, and drain pans.

5. Replace worn parts proactively

HVAC system maintenance should always include inspections of your system’s condition and identification of aging parts. Replacing worn parts BEFORE they break is the best way to prevent breakdowns and expensive repairs.

Your HVAC tech should inspect all electrical and mechanical parts and keep you aware of which parts of the system need attention.

One critical heating component to pay attention to is the ignition assembly. This is a delicate part of the furnace that, if dirty or damaged, will leave you without any heat. Replacing fan belts when they show wear also helps prevent breakdowns and helps your equipment operate efficiently.

6. Keep an HVAC system maintenance calendar & get a maintenance contract

HVAC is a complex system with many components. Especially for a large commercial or base building system, the number of pieces to keep track of can really add up.

If it’s your job to manage the status of a large HVAC system, make it simpler by keeping an HVAC system maintenance calendar. Mark when you fix or replace a part, so you’ll have an easy reference for when each job needs to be done in the future.

Even better, get a preventative maintenance contract with a reputable HVAC company that can track all your components and provide you with regular status reports. Here’s some additional reading that can help you choose the right HVAC maintenance contract for your needs:

Take Control of your Revit 2018 Schedules

Take Control of your Revit 2018 Schedules

Over the years of working with REVIT, it has become necessary to keep the View and Sheet Browser organized. Now Autodesk has given us the ability to organize our Schedules. As our Revit projects get bigger and more complex so do our schedules. Some projects may only have 5 to 6 schedules, but I have worked on projects with dozens of schedules. Some schedules may end up on sheets but many are designed to just support the design or QA/QC process. It can become increasingly difficult to keep the schedules organized.

How do we currently manage our long list of schedules?

Let's go through the steps to create your custom schedules.

First, customize and organize your Revit 2018 schedules

Optionally, you can access the Browser Organization under the View Tab > User Interface.

Create new Organization Schemes such as Category, Phase or Schedule Type.

Define how your schedules are grouped and sorted. Use the Default choices or a custom parameter

The Results

Organized by Schedule Type.

Organized by Category.

Organized by Custom Parameters

High frequency impulse measurement

High-frequency impulse-measurement

Structure-borne sound signal in the conventional 2-dimensional diagram "amplitude vs. time" (1) and the same signal as 3-dimensional HFIM process landscape (2). The enhanced signal-to-noise ratio becomes obvious while an impulse-like signal (3) becomes directly evident in the HFIM picture whereas it is not visible in the 2-dimensional diagram.

HFIM, acronym for high-frequency-impulse-measurement, is a type of measurement technique in acoustics, where structure-borne sound signals are detected and processed with certain emphasis on short-lived signals as they are indicative for crack formation in a solid body, mostly steel. The basic idea is to use mathematical signal processing methods such as Fourier analysis in combination with suitable computer hardware to allow for real-time measurements of acoustic signal amplitudes as well as their distribution in frequency space. The main benefit of this technique is the enhanced signal-to-noise ratio when it comes to the separation of acoustic emission from a certain source and other, unwanted contamination by any kinds of noise. The technique is therefore mostly applied in industrial production processes, e.g. cold forming or machining, where a 100 percent quality control is required or in condition monitoring for e.g. quantifying tool wear.

Contents

• 1Physical basics
• 2Applications
• 3References
• 4External links and further reading
  

Physical basics

High-frequency-impulse measurement is an algorithm for obtaining frequency information of any structure- or air-borne sound source on the basis of discrete signal transformations. This is mostly done using [Fourier series] to quantify the distribution of the energy content of a sound signal in frequency space. On the software side, the tool used for this is the fast Fourier transform (FFT) implementation of this mathematical transformation. This allows, in combination with specific hardware, to directly obtain frequency information so that this is accessible in-line, e.g. during a production process. Contrary to classical, off-line frequency analysis methods, the signal is not unfolded before transformation but is directly fed into the FFT computation. Single events, such as cracks, are hence depicted as extremely short-lived signals covering the entire frequency range (the Fourier transform of a single impulse is a signal covering the entire observed frequency space). Therefore, such single events are easily separable from other noises, even if they are much more energetic.

Applications

Because of its in-line capabilities, HFIM is mostly applied in industrial production processes when it comes to high quality standards e.g. for auto parts that are relevant for crash behavior of a car:

• Cold forming: In cold forming applications, HFIM is mostly used to detect cracks during the forming process. Since such cracks are vastly due to stress in the manufactured part, the spontaneous formation of a crack is accompanied by a very sharp, impulse-like signal in the HFIM process landscape which can easily be separated from other noise. Therefore, HFIM is the standard technology for crack detection in the automotive sector all over the world.
• Machining: In many machining applications, HFIM is used to either monitor the status of tool wear and hence enable pedicitive maintenance or to prevent chatter.
• Plastic injection molding: Here, HFIM is used to monitor the status of the molds which are usually very complex. In particular, breaking off of small pins or other parts of the mold can be detected in-line.
• Welding: In contrast to most classical monitoring systems for the welding process which usually measure currents or voltages on the welding device, HFIM measures the energy acting directly on the welded workpiece. That allows for detection of various weld imperfactions such as burn-through.

There are also several applications of HFIM devices in materials science laboratories where the exact timing of crack formation is relevant, for instance when determining the plasticity of a new kind of steel.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Auto cad 2020 Whats New

Auto cad 2020 Whats New 

Auto CAD 2020 provides a set of enhancements based on customer feedback, surveys, and analytic data that prioritize our efforts. Several features modernize and streamline frequently used features across many customer disciplines.

New Dark Theme

Your user interface is obviously something that you use all the time. Past customer feedback repeatedly indicated that we needed to make significant changes to improve the clarity and crispness of the dark theme. Similar sharpening was also applied to the light theme as well.

As you can see, we optimized the background colors with the icon colors to provide the optimum contrast without distracting from the drawing area, where you’re usually focused.

The highlighting of contextual tabs on the ribbon is now more distinct when active, such as when you edit text or create a hatch.

Ribbon Access

Application button >Application Options > Display tab > Window Elements > Color Theme

Blocks Palette

Several methods for inserting blocks are currently available: Insert, Tool Palettes and Design enter. Having these different options available recognizes that people in different disciplines have different requirements and preferences.

The primary reason for redesigning the Insert dialog box is to provide better visual previews of blocks in the workflow for inserting blocks. The palette increases efficiency for finding and inserting multiple blocks-including the new Repeat Placement option, which can save you a step.

Key features in the new Blocks palette facilitate specifying and inserting blocks efficiently from a most recently used list or from specified drawings. Three tabs provide access to the following:

·         The Current Drawing tab displays all the block definitions in the current drawing either as icons or as a list.

·         The Recent tab displays all the most recently inserted blocks regardless of the current drawing. These persist between drawings and sessions. You can remove a block from this tab by right clicking it and choosing Remove from Recent List.

·         The Other Drawing tab provides a way of navigating to folders from which you can choose drawings either to insert as blocks or to choose from the blocks defined in those drawings. These drawings and blocks also persist between drawings and sessions.

The top of the palette includes several controls, including a field for applying wildcard filters to the block names, and several options for different thumbnail sizes and list styles.

Ribbon Access

Home tab > Block panel > Insert.

Access from the ribbon provides a gallery of the blocks available in the current drawing together with two new options, Recent Blocks and Blocks from other Drawings.

These two options open the Blocks palette either to the Recent tab or the Other Drawing tab. The Current Drawing tab in the Blocks palette displays the same blocks in the current drawing as the ribbon gallery. Placing blocks from the Blocks palette can be accomplished by dragging and dropping or clicking and placing.

New and Changed Commands

BLOCKS PALETTE – Opens the Blocks palette.

BLOCKSPALETTECLOSE – Closes the Blocks Palette.

CLASSIC INSERT – Opens the classic Insert dialog box.

INSERT – Starts the BLOCK PALETTE command except in scripts, which open the legacy INSERT command for script compatibility.

INSERT – Starts the command line version of the classic INSERT

command.

New System Variables

BLOCKMRULIST – Controls the number of blocks displayed in the Recent tab of the Blocks palette.

BLOCK NAVIGATE– Controls the file and blocks that are displayed in the Other Drawing tab of the Blocks palette. Takes effect the next time you start the program.

BLOCKREDEFINEMODE – Controls whether the “Block- Redefine Block” task dialog box is displayed when inserting a block from the Blocks palette with the same name as a block inside the current drawing.

BLOCK STATE(Read only) – Reports whether the Blocks palette is open or closed.

Purge Redesign

The Purge feature has been revised for easier drawing cleanup and organization. The control options are nearly the same, but the orientation is more efficient and the Preview area is now resizable.

·         Notice that you can now purge zero-length geometry without purging empty text objects.

·         Check boxes in the Named Items Not Used panel provide a way to select purgeable items by category as well as individual items.

·         The Find Non-Purgeable Items button displays information specific to why the checked item cannot be purged, which will be helpful in many cases.

·         For objects that can’t be purged, the new design provides enhanced information as shown below, including the number of objects on each layer and their impact on file size. The Select Objects button shown in the illustration below, zooms in on the specified objects that can’t be purged.

Ribbon Access

Manage tab > Clean up panel > Find Non-Purgeable  Items and Purge.

These two controls determine whether the Purgeable Items or Find Non-Purgeable Items display when the Purge dialog box opens.

Changed Commands

PURGE– Opens the redesigned Purge dialog box.

DWG Compare Enhancements

The primary enhancement to the DWG Compare feature is that you can now directly compare and edit the current drawing together with a specified drawing while in the compare state. The comparison takes place in the current drawing. Any changes you make in either the current drawing or the compared drawing are dynamically compared and highlighted.

To facilitate direct editing in the compare state, the options and controls for this feature were moved from the ribbon to a docked toolbar at the top of the drawing area. Most of the options were combined into the Settings control and enhanced as shown. You can easily toggle the comparison from the toolbar and the display of the types of differences from the Settings control.

Also, the default colors can easily be changed by clicking on a color for your preferences or for color-blind-friendly colors. In this illustration, the color for Not in Current Drawing was changed from red to yellow.

For example, let’s say you need to compare the differences between two highly complex drawings that have been simplified to look like the following:

The result of comparing the current drawing with the compared drawing looks like this:

The change sets are each surrounded by orange revision clouds, which are scaled to the drawing extents.

·         You can import the highlighted differences in yellow from the compared drawing into the current drawing. If you do so, these objects will now exist in both drawings and will automatically turn gray. Only the objects in the specified area that are not in the current drawing can be imported.

·         You can also export both drawings into a new snapshot drawing that combines the similarities and changes between both drawings. The result of this operation is the same as a drawing comparison in Auto CAD 2019.

·         The arrow buttons provide a way to step through each change set, automatically zooming in to each successive or previous change set.

Tool set-Specific Limitations

The following tables describe how certain objects are affected when imported during a comparison with drawings created using the Auto CAD Electrical and Auto CAD Mechanical tool sets.

Auto CAD Electrical tool set objects	Result after a compare import operation
Wires	Wires will lose some properties such as color and size. The wire data is available in the project as layers and cannot be imported into the drawing comparison mode.
Wire number	The wire number is disconnected with the wire. The imported wire number will lose its relationship with the wire.
Source/Destination arrows	The source and destination arrows imported will not have the correct wire numbers. The source arrows and the destination arrows will also lose their relationship to each other.
Schematic terminals	These blocks will retain their electrical properties, however the terminal wire numbers will not be updated.
Balloons	The imported balloons will not be grouped and will be available only as exploded geometric objects.
Auto CAD Mechanical tool set objects	Result after a compare import operation
Mechanical symbols	Importing a mechanical symbol that’s attached to an object also imports the associated object. For example, if a weld symbol is attached to a rectangle, importing the weld symbol will also import the rectangle object.
Standard parts	Importing a standard part will not update the Bill of Materials (BOM) unless you also select the associated part reference of the standard part.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) objects and other calculation objects	Importing an FEA object will not include its mechanical data and the object will be imported as a block.

Ribbon Access

Collaborate tab > Compare panel > DWG Compare.

New Commands

COMPARECLOSE – Closes the Compare toolbar and exits the comparison.

COMPAREEXPORT – Exports the comparison results into a new drawing, called a snapshot drawing, and opens the drawing.

COMPAREIMPORT – Imports objects from the compared file into the current drawing. Only the selected objects that exist in the compared file and not in the current file are imported.

New System Variables

None.

Measure Geometry Option: Quick Measure

Measuring has become much faster with the new Quick option of the MEASUREGEOM command. With this option, you can quickly review the dimensions, distances, and angles within a 2D drawing.

When this option is active, the command displays dimensions, distances, and angles within a 2D drawing dynamically as you move your mouse over and between objects. The orange squares displayed at the left side of the illustration represent angles at precisely 90 degrees.

The distance between the two objects is measured in the illustration below because they’re parallel.

Tip: To avoid quick dimension clutter and to improve performance, it’s best to zoom into complicated areas.

Ribbon Access

Home tab > Utilities panel > Measure/Quick.

Changed Commands

MEASUREGEOM – Adds the Quick option for real-time measurements.

New System Variables

None.

Performance Improvements

A new installation technology dramatically improves the install time on solid state drives (SSD), typically reducing the time by about half.

Network access time to Xrefs, blocks, and support files has been improved. Support files include those associated with hatches, tool palettes, fonts, line types, template files, standards files, and so on. The degree of improvement depends on the size and content of your drawing files and network performance.

Support for Cloud Services

Auto CAD 2020 now supports cloud connectivity and storage with several cloud service providers when you use the Save, Save As, and Open commands.

Depending on what you have installed, the Places list in Auto CAD file selection dialog boxes can include Box, Dropbox, and several similar services.

Save to Web & Mobile Enhancements

Auto CAD 2020 includes additional support for Auto CAD Web and Auto CAD Mobile. The enhancements are as follows:

·         Includes Xrefs with the drawing files that you save for Auto Cad web and mobile access.

·         The CAD Manager Control Utility includes a new checkbox on the Online Content tab to disable the SAVETOWEBMOBILE and OPENFROMWEBMOBILE commands. This control has been added for sites that require their drawings to remain exclusively within their organization’s network.

Access

Quick Access toolbar > Save to Web & Mobile and Open from Web & Mobile commands as shown below:

Graphics Configuration

Auto CAD now launches correctly with different DirectX drivers (Dx9, Dx11, or no driver), high resolution (4K) monitors, and dual monitors. In addition, the graphics display settings are consolidated into three modes, which includes gradient hatches and images. The graphics performance setting, Intermediate Mode, is updated to reset several display parameters automatically to optimize your display.

Access

Enter GRAPHICSCONFIG at the Command prompt.

The Graphics Performance dialog box displays, shown in part below.

Changed Commands

Graphicsconfig– Revised 2D Display Settings as displayed in the Graphics Performance Dialog Box

GRAPHICSCONFIG– Revised command line options that support the new 2D Display Settings.

Security Enhancements

Following are highlights of the work completed in Auto CAD 2020 relating to cyber security. Due to the sensitive nature of some of these fixes, we’ve deliberately avoided providing overly specific descriptions.

·         Four potential exploits in certain data files created by Auto CAD have been closed.

·         Several dependencies on DLLs or other components used in Auto CAD with known vulnerabilities were removed or upgraded.

·         A future vulnerability in a component is in process of being replaced.

·         A potential server vulnerability has been closed with an upgrade.

Because your work and intellectual property are frequently targeted by cybercriminal and other organizations, it’s always important to keep up with the latest product, network, and operating system upgrades, cyber security enhancements, and fixes. Autodesk continues to monitor cyber threats and strives to deliver products that conform to current and anticipated security requirements.