Autodesk Ecotect V.5.6.0.1 RC2

Autodesk Ecotect is a complete building design and environmental analysis tool that covers the full range of simulation and analysis functions required to truly understand how a building design will operate and perform. It finally allows designers to work easily in 3D and apply all the tools necessary for an energy efficient and sustainable future.

In almost all projects, decisions made in the first few weeks have the greatest overall impact on building performance. Where it is on site, its basic form and orientation, internal layout, external materials, window size and position - ECOTECT helps you get all this right from the very beginning.

Seeing is believing, and ECOTECT shows your results in 3D within the actual context of your design. Be it surface mapped information, spatial volumetric renderings or simple shadow animations, you can interact with data usually in real time and with stunning visual feedback.

ECOTECT was written and developed by architects with its application in architecture and the design process firmly in mind. However, it is also used extensively by engineers, local authorities, environmental consultants, building designers, owner-builders and environmental enthusiasts alike.

With its advanced scripting engine, easy-to-use editor and the new WizardMaker visual interface, making ECOTECT do exactly what you want has never been easier. Moreover, these tools provide the perfect infrastructure within which to fully investigate performance-driven design techniques, moving your architecture to a whole new league.

Required:
* Pentium II processor or equivalent 300+ MHz
* Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT 3.5x (not Windows ME)
* 800 x 600 High Colour (16 Bit) Screen Resolution
* 64 Mb RAM
* 50 Mb free hard disk space
* For information on network licencing requirements please read the network licence guide

Preferred:
* Pentium II processor or equivalent 700+ MHz
* Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP (not Windows ME)
* 1024 x 768 True Colour (24 Bit) Screen Resolution
* Hardware Accelerated Video Card
* 256 Mb RAM
* 50 Mb free hard disk space

ECOTECT on Win95, 98 & ME

In its user interface, ECOTECT makes use of a large number of icons, buttons and text entry boxes in toolbars and panels surrounding the modelling area. This is not an issue on NT, Win2000 and XP Operating Systems (OS), however some Windows 95 and 98 users have experienced low resource problems when running several other applications at the same time. Windows ME systems seem particularly prone to this problem.

Whilst ECOTECT may run fine on an ME system, we do not recommend that you use it under ME as we cannot fully solve this OS-specific problem. The only recommendation we can suggest users try, (other than upgrading OS) is to make sure that you have as few programs and system tray items running whilst using ECOTECT -- this way the OS may be able to allocate the required amount of resources for the software to run.
ECOTECT on an Apple Mac

ECOTECT is a Windows program and therefore will only run on an Apple Macintosh when using a Windows emulator such as Virtual PC.

Although we haven't tested it thoroughly, we do have quite a few customers using ECOTECT via virtual PC who assure us it is quite stable and not too slow. Our Mac users have suggested the use of a two or three button mouse though, as if you don't have one you will need to do a bit of finger gymnastics to achieve a right mouse click (which is something ECOTECT uses to rotate and pan the model in perspective view).

Again although we haven't thoroughly tested it, we are assured that Virtual PC will run the rest of the Square One software range as well.

Download Autodesk Ecotect V.5.6.0.1 RC2

here