[Bldg-sim] eQuest - common surface between shells and zooming in 3D

Nick Caton ncaton at smithboucher.com
Mon Jun 11 09:30:13 PDT 2012


For future reference, wizards will recognize coincident vertical exterior surfaces and distinguish exterior vs. interior as you're describing, but it requires some planning when defining shells.  Attached is one of a few discussions covering this from the archives.

The model orientation issue I think Brian is getting at manifests as errors of rounding for angled geometries.  I've run into that on rare occasion - it's obvious something is wrong by the time you finish wizards.  I can see this being avoided by defining "cardinal-skewed" building to maximize orthogonal lines for spaces, but you can also spot-fix such issues after the fact by redefining geometries & shell perimeters with extra vertices, in my experience.

I would give zero concern to naming conventions of surfaces, personally, but I can see how that might cause others heartache.  I've never been one to care much if a space or component has an arbitrary name, so long as the person using the model (usually me) can figure out what's what.  If it really bothers you, you might be able to fairly quickly correct such 'misnaming' after the fact in notepad using the "replace with" function (ex:  replace all instances of "North Wall" with "North-NorthWest Wall").

To help clarify steps 3 onwards as suggested by Patrick, here is a visual step-by-step guide for turning an exterior wall into an interior wall, transcribed from another discussion from the lists:
http://onebuilding.org/wiki/doku.php/convert_an_exterior_surface_to_an_interior_surface_detailed

There are usually multiple paths to the same end for detailed geometry edits - choose whatever is most intuitive to you!

Also, 3D view has a zoom & rotate feature, but no pan (you always look at the origin).

Hold ctrl, then left-click --> mouse movement = rotate
Hold ctrl, then right-click --> mouse movement = zoom

If anyone is using a one-button mouse with eQuest, you should probably slowly put down your pencil/slide-rule, step away from your visual display terminal, and take a short trip to your office supply store for a well-deserved mouse upgrade =).

~Nick


[cid:489575314 at 22072009-0ABB]

NICK CATON, P.E.
SENIOR ENGINEER

Smith & Boucher Engineers
25501 west valley parkway, suite 200
olathe, ks 66061
direct 913.344.0036
fax 913.345.0617
www.smithboucher.com

From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Robby Oylear
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 11:07 AM
To: Brian Fountain
Cc: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] eQuest - common surface between shells and zooming in 3D

Brian,

That's an interesting way to go about modeling your buildings.  Are you finding the situation comes up often enough to warrant this approach?  My only concern would be that all of your surfaces would then be named incorrectly as far as orientation goes.  Due you go back and correct the surface names or do you not make much use of the eQUEST wizard naming conventions?

Robby Oylear, P.E., LEED AP
Mechanical Engineer
Senior Energy Analyst

D 206-788-4571
www.rushingco.com<http://www.rushingco.com/>

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Brian Fountain <bfountain at greensim.com<mailto:bfountain at greensim.com>> wrote:
Hi Liam,

eQUEST DD wizard will split your common walls horizontally and create and interior partition for the lower portion and an exterior surface on the upper portion.  We have found however that it has difficulty if on the DD wizard shell screen 2 you set the building orientation to anything other than north = up (the default).  So our practice is to simply not rotate the building in the wizard but rather set the building azimuth in the detailed interface.  In this way, walls of adjacent shells are set correctly.

Roofs of course are another matter entirely.

Cheers,

Brian

PS - this is probably a better topic for the eQUEST-users list rather than bldg-sim.

From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org<mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org> [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org<mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org>] On Behalf Of Liam O'Brien
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 8:42 AM
To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org<mailto:bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org>
Subject: [Bldg-sim] eQuest - common surface between shells and zooming in 3D

Hi All,

Two quick questions as an eQUEST rookie:

1) I have a gym (25 ft tall) shell surrounded by a hallway shell (10ft). I was hoping that the gym's surfaces that touch the hall would be split into two (10 ft tall and 15ft tall) so that they would have different boundary conditions; namely that the top 15ft would be exposed to the exterior. However, the DD Wizard is making the whole thing exposed to the exterior. Is there a way around manually fixing this in the detailed mode? I really hope so!

2) In the 3D view mode, is there any way to zoom or pan (and not just rotate). If I'm going to edit things in detailed mode (see above!), then that would be pretty helpful!

Thanks in advance,

Liam O'Brien
Assistant Professor
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

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