In this introduction, the basic operating sequences, file types, and program types are discussed regarding the energy analysis and design program eQuest. Included are user flow charts for basic user operation
Basics of eQUEST: eQUEST is the DOE2 engine with wizards and graphics built on top of it. It allows you to run quick simulations or very complex models. The three wizards you need to be familiar with are:
1. Schematic Design Wizard
2. Design Development Wizard
3. Energy Efficiency Measure Wizard
The first two wizard, schematic design wizard (SD) and Design Development Wizard (DD) are used to design and construct a project, while the Energy Efficiency Wizard (EEM) is used to make comparisons. For instance, what if you want to try multiple types of glass in your building simulation? You would use the EEM to model up to 10 different options.
Lets start with a simple calculation: We have a single shell building and we want some quick simulation results.
We can run the SD wizard in a matter of minutes to show the standard reports, and then run the EEM wizard, which would give you the standard reports as well as the parametric run reports comparing multiple options. To make things a little bit more confusing, we could have done the exact same thing in the DD wizard which would have taken an additional few minutes, but not really significant.
This leads to a common question among new eQUEST users: "Which wizard do I use?"
A: For completely new users to eQUEST you can almost always start with the SD wizard, used for single shells, while the DD wizard is used for multiple shells. So what is a shell? If you look at the pictures here you see a three story building sharing the same building footprint, which is a single shell. The building on the right shows a single building with an additional wing that would be considered an additional shell. This is because all parts of the building do not have a common footprint. However if you started in the schematic design and later on discover there is an additional shell you can always jump from the SD to the DD. EQUEST is made so you can transition to different programs and wizards without using your data, but these movements are usually one directional, meaning that if you were to go from the SD wizard to the DD wizard, you cannot go back to the SD wizard. You can also not go back from the detailed data mode to the DD wizard or SD wizard.
A common mistake is that users start in DD wizard and try to go to the SD wizard. This is impossible since the DD wizard uses more data than the SD wizard and you would lose data by transition back into the SD wizard.
Lets take a look at some of the common flow diagrams an eQUEST user may encounter. A user may simple start in the schematic design wizard and jump into the summary results or detailed sim output (advanced results). The user may also run the same file in the SD wizard and run the EEM report and get the parametric reports in the meantime. The same thing can be done with the DD wizard, but remember that DD allows more than one shell and mulitple options. Both of these wizards are covered in the intro to eQUEST course.
Another common flow diagram is to start with the SD, run your parametric runs, then jump into the DD, run your parametric runs again, and from the DD wizard you could run your summary results or get your detailed results as well. If you going to use eQUEST your probably going to have to use the detailed data entry. This is common for energy modelers, but before you get that far you need to understand how the files are related and how they operate.
There are several importatnt file types in equest:
*.PD2 - Building inputs for wizards: the data in this file is data enetered by the user and not the defaults
*.PRD - Parametric Run Definitions: this file contains the opitions when you run parametric runs, for instance when comparing glass types.
*.SIM - Large output files (text): This can be viewed in eQUEST when we want to view advanced reports
*.INP - Building inputs (Created by wizards) - (Advanced users) can edit with text editors: We will show how to do this in the course
Before we open the program it is important to note that eQUEST uses color coded text.
eQUEST Color Coded Text:
Most common:
red - user input (or wizard input written to the Detailed Interface INP file
green - eQUEST (or DOE-2.2) default values
Less common:
dk blue - Library values
lt blue - User-defined default values
magenta - values based on formula-like 'expressions' (expressions covered in intro to eQUEST lesson)
purple - linked values
