HEED: Home Energy Efficient Design

**) The graphics package in Ventura is not backwards compatible, so HEED and some of our other programs will not run on Ventura. Our recommendation is to use a prior Mac OS or a Windows partition. Some users run under Parallels but the 3D plots cannot load. 

This new easy-to-use Design Tool starts by automatically creating a reference house that meets California’s Energy Code. Then it creates a second home that is about 30% more Energy Efficient. You can design and compare up to nine different homes. HEED shows you graphics of how much energy and money and carbon you can save by trying various new Design options or by making Remodeling changes to your home. You can easily draw in the floor plan of your house, then click and drag windows to their best location on each wall. You can add trees and neighboring buildings and see an animation of sun shadows moving across your building. You can select from lists of standard wall and roof construction or you can input custom details. You can add high mass to temper indoor temperatures. Various other Passive Heating and Cooling options are available including ventilation, evaporative cooling, and passive solar heating. You can add Photovoltaic Panels and Solar Hot Water Collectors. HEED can automatically download climate data for thousands of locations around the world. Many kinds of Building Energy Performance data are displayed including bar charts that show how close your building is to Zero Net Energy. For Advanced Users there are more detailed data input options and output display graphics from the original Solar-5. HEED Self-installs on (non-networked) Windows XP or newer and macOS 10.6 or newer systems. A new Tablet version of HEED is also available to run on the MS Surface Pro.

RELEASE NOTES

NOTE 1: (Windows Only) If you install this new version in an existing HEED folder, it will preserve your prior design data. Otherwise you can start fresh by installing it in a new folder that you might call HEED-new.

NOTE 2: (Windows Only) If you are having difficulty installing or running HEED, be sure to follow the default procedure which installs HEED at the top level (C:\HEED), and do not use folder names longer that 8 characters. If you are running behind a firewall or on a network, stop and see your systems administrator for permission to install it. If you get an OpenGL warning or strange graphics behavior be sure you have installed the latest version of your graphics driver and that you have the current Windows Service Pack installed. If you are a Vista or Windows 7 user who is having difficulty, you might first designate yourself as Systems Administrator (go to Settings, Control Panel, Users). Vista installation problems might be solved if you temporarily lower their level of security. In both cases however, once installed you should return to your original configuration. Advanced Vista users might consult Microsoft's User Account Control Step-by-Step Guide.

NOTE 3: (Windows Only) This newest release is similar to the prior Build 22 except that it resolves a problem some users had with 3-D graphics. It now calculates shading on each window for each hour from distant trees and neighboring structures, this is in addition to the prior calculation of shading from overhangs and fins that are attached to the building. Therefore, the Installer now must check to see if your graphics card and graphics drivers are compatible with HEED’s 3-D graphic calculations, and if not it might install a prior less-complex version. See also HELP on any HEED screen with 3D Graphics.

NOTE 4: (Windows and Mac) If you encounter an error while running HEED, please use the Archive command in the Library menu and email the archive this creates, along with a few words about what you were doing, to energy.design.tools@ucla.edu.

NOTE 5: (Mac Only) HEED 5 runs on macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and newer. (Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu to see your version information.)

NOTE 6: (Mac Only) HEED 4 runs on macOS 10.10 (Yosemite), macOS 10.9 (Mavericks), macOS 10.8 (Mountain Lion), macOS 10.7 (Lion) and macOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). (Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu to see your version information.) 

Mac and macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.