before you run our installer
Who we are
Five Element Group is an architecture and building-physics practice in South Melbourne. Five things go on under the one roof, and the software is the most accidental of them — it exists because we kept building tools for our own desks, and a good tool sitting on one laptop is a waste of a good tool.
Five Element Architecture
Houses and alterations, designed around how a place will feel to live in rather than how it photographs. Mind-maps before floor-plans.
fiveelementarchitecture.com →Building Physics Australia
The measuring half: NatHERS ratings, Passivhaus and PHPP, Section J, thermal bridging and the reports councils ask for. Numbers, with the assumptions written down.
buildingphysics.au →Working Record
The back-office software the practice runs on — projects, timesheets, invoicing, the bank and the BAS in one place. Built for ourselves first, now sold to other practices.
workingrecord.com.au →The shop
Equipment that has done its time in the studio, and a few things we make. Sold with a real invoice rather than left in a cupboard.
shop.fiveelementgroup.com →This software
Small tools we needed and could not find done well: marking up drawings, pointing at screenshots, drive letters that follow us between offices, moving Outlook to a new PC.
why it's free
No catch, which is the point
- Free for personal and commercial work. No accounts, no adverts, no subscriptions.
- We use every one of these ourselves, so they get fixed when they annoy us — and when they annoy you, through the support form on each tool's page.
- The installers aren't code-signed yet, so Windows and macOS warn you the first time. Each tool's page says how to get past that, and why it's there.
- If one saves you an afternoon, there's a coffee button. It keeps the tools coming; it isn't required, and it isn't a tax-deductible donation.
Five Element Group Pty Ltd · ABN 89 627 200 980 · South Melbourne, Victoria. Write to us at gday@fiveelementgroup.com.