Psi Therm software

[Rachel Mitchell]

I am looking into buying some software to calculate psi values and have been looking at Psi Term – has anyone any experience of using this. I can't seem to get on with Therm and Pete's Spreadsheet and need something simple to use.

[Mark Siddall]

Rachel,
I've not used Psi-therm but I know a man that has. Apparently it is (now) quite good. Some teething issues on translation may still occur but from what I hear they are quickly responded to.

Mark

[Tom Foster]

You mean Psi-therm 'quite good' relative to Therm 'good'?
What about each of those relative to the Therm-like functions in WUFI 2D and Delphin? Anyone?
What about Psi-therm 3D? – that's a tall order, previously costing £7k plus from Ansys.

[Rachel Mitchell]

Thanks Mark and Tom for your replies – its much appreciated

[Tom Foster]

Well I didn't help much, just asked supplementaries!

[Mark Siddall]

Better than therm as calcs psi-values without the need to export to excel.

[Anonymous]

I am looking into buying some software to calculate psi values and have been looking at Psi Term – has anyone any experience of using this. I can't seem to get on with Therm and Pete's Spreadsheet and need something simple to use.

Hi Rachel,

I'm probably the 'man who has' quoted by Mark. We've been using it extensively for over a year now. It is an excellent piece of software that paid for itself very quickly on time saved compared to using Therm.

The 2d version is very fast to use and stable etc. The 3d version can on occasion be buggy under certain conditions – for example modelling the light gauge steel frame wall / floor / corner junction validation case in BR 497 resulted in some modelling bugs that took a few attempts to get right. There are also some very nice features – for example you can have numerous details in one file, simplifying data management issues.

I would recommend it whole-heartedly and recommend Andrew Lundberg at http://www.passivate.ie/ as the people to liaise with.

I'm happy to provide a verbal reference / answer any questions if you wanted to call.

regards

Nick Devlin

[Tom Foster]

Thanks for comparative info Mark.

Can anyone answer

What about each of those (Therm, Psi-Therm) relative to the Therm-like functions in WUFI 2D and Delphin?

[Tom Foster]

Anyone else? Wd be gd to share experiences, to establish which of these softwares is best, well supported, and costs, as lots of people will be getting into it.

To me it's a wide field e.g.:
Thermal bridging, 2D: Therm, Delphin, WUFI 2D, PsiTherm
Thermal bridging, 3D: PsiTherm, Transys
Moisture, 1D: Wufi Pro, Delphin, PsiTherm
Moisture, 2D: Wufi 2D, Delphin, PsiTherm
Whole-building thermal/solar: Wufi Plus (integrates with Wufi Pro), Tas, EIS, Hevacomp (now Bentley), Hot 3000, lots more.

The ease of interface (or not) of these with main CAD packages is important too.

[Tom Foster]

Discussion currently in http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/forum114/comments.php?DiscussionID=11107&page=1#Item_13 – incl using generic FEA freeware http://lisafea.com .

FEA models in time-steps, and so needs materials' density and HSC info as well as conductance; whereas Therm knows nothing of time and just gives the steady-state (or eventual equilibriated time-step) situation.

[Author]

Posts