[Equest-users] Simplifying the Task of Geometry Creation in eQUEST

[J Graham]

Greetings eQUESTers –

I’m trying to determine if a service I have designed would be valuable
to eQUEST modelers and their firms.  If not, I’m considering
abandoning it to pursue other ventures. However, I would hate to do
that without first asking the user base for their opinion.  From the
posts I've read, you are a wonderful and helpful group... so I
couldn't help but ask.

The goal of the service would be to alleviate some of the potential
inefficiencies and tedium engineers experience in creating geometry in
eQUEST by providing substantially representative building models, more
quickly and with less expense to their engineering firm.

Over the past several years, one such firm has tasked me with creating
the building geometry for their eQUEST models. During that time I had
developed a method and written custom code which helps me quickly
convert 2d drawings into detailed, representative (and beautiful) 3d
eQUEST geometry.

With this process, I can, among many other things:
- quickly create building geometry from floor plans and elevations,
per the engineer's specification (including complicated geometries
like stepped roofs and overhangs).
- quickly create individual, actual windows from elevation drawings
(no more banded windows!)
- duplicate, translate and rotate buildings (great for copying similar
buildings with different orientations in the same model)
- read in an exisitng inp file and quickly assign attributes to many
geometric components at once (e.g., apply a particular glazing to all
windows smaller than 6 x 8, but larger than 2 x 3, on walls facing
between SE and SW).
- batch ("all at once") create new components for various groupings of
associated components, for example:
- - create the associated plenum spaces (and their walls) for all of
the conditioned spaces on floors 1-5,
- - create banded windows on every wall which has a conditioned space
as a parent
- - create and assign the corresponding zones for every space

With these capabilities, I suspect I can pass on some cost and time
savings to the eQUEST modeling process.  Furthermore, with this
framework already place, I can easily expand the "software’s" batch
creation and assignment capabilities beyond geometric components, as
modeler's needs arise. (i.e. “the hard part is done”).

That said, there very well may be an existing solution which can
perform the tasks noted above. I'm simply not familiar enough to know.
 I've read about the Revit >  gbXML > eQUEST translation process, but
I have seen complaints that it is error prone, and even then, I'm not
sure it has all of the capabilities I've mentioned.  I think the
remaining alternatives involve creating and editing the model
manually, or simplifying the model substantially (which, for energy
modeling, may very well be sufficient).

I suppose the question I'm trying to ask is: Are there inefficiencies
and/or oversimplifications in the existing eQUEST geometry creation
process which can be improved with a subcontracting service like this?

Any and all other thoughts are welcome.

I’m just trying to decide if this is an idea worth pursuing. At the
very least, I hopefully stirred up some conversation where everyone
can exchange useful information about creating geometry in eQUEST.

Thanks in advance

J Graham

P.S. Please feel free to email me off post if you'd like to see some
samples of geometry I have created:
eQuest3d at gmail.com