[Equest-users] Expression Evaluation Error

[Eric O'Neill]

Bruce and Matthew,

My understanding of defining the vertices is that the way they line up only affects how the wall constructions are defined, and shouldn't result in an error. For instance, for zone boundaries defined near an exterior wall where the vertices don't line up exactly, eQUEST may define them as an interior wall, or possibly an exterior wall with no windows (I haven't taken the time to discern what the ruleset is for that). Internal zones that don't line up perfectly are usually defined as adiabatic rather than as an interior wall construction, but the space and zones themselves don't really care if they line up or even overlap. For my purposes, I took the time to do the exterior walls correctly, but it's not worth the additional time to get the interior walls perfect (this isn't for LEED or anything quite to that level of detail) for every single space.

As an example, you can set up and run a brief model on a building like below, and it will fully simulate without errors, despite obvious overlapping floorspaces and walls that don't line up.

Normally I take the time to line things up well, so I could be wrong on this. Am I misunderstanding what you guys are trying to say, or (more importantly) am I missing something wrong with this approach?

I tried Robby's suggestion - I duplicated that shell, and on one copy I deleted the north zones, and the other I deleted the south zones, and the errors have disappeared.

Thanks everyone!

Eric L. O'Neill, P.E., LEED AP
Direct 608.785.3328 | Michaels Energy
[cid:image009.jpg at 01CE9F3F.17B05070] [cid:image010.png at 01CE9F3A.683E3570]
From: Bruce Easterbrook [mailto:bruce5 at bellnet.ca]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 11:50 AM
To: Eric O'Neill
Cc: equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Equest-users] Expression Evaluation Error

I would say some of your vertices are not lining up.  Even visually I can see a few potential problem points for you.  They have to be exact.  Nothing can overlap nor can there be any gaps.  eQuest is very picky, you pretty much have to be exact to 3 decimal places.  It may sound like a lot of work but I would print out your CAD plan and mark your points on it.  When I do my perimeter I add extra points on the exterior walls where the zones intersect.  It gives you something to snap to when you are defining your zones later.  When defining your zone polygons you can also directly edit the number if you can't get the point to snap exactly.  The only snap I use is the CAD drawing.  One other thing I do is make an eQuest layer on the CAD drawing and simplify the plan to the perimeter and the zones.  It makes it easier in the long run to keep track of all the vertices.  There are too many potential places to snap to on an architectural drawing.
Bruce Easterbrook P.Eng
Abode Engineering
On 22/08/2013 11:55 AM, Eric O'Neill wrote:
This one has me stumped, and it looks like it's been an issue before, so I'm hoping someone has an idea. I was building a model in the wizard and went to save-as before something got screwy, and it appeared I was too late. I got an error for multiple zones that read "MULTIPLIER in XXXzone has Expression Evaluation Error: Invalid BDL reference", followed up by a bunch of zone errors stating that they were "referenced but not defined". I did some searching and came up with a few hits, but no solutions (that I could see). I bit the bullet and went back and tried to rezone it from my last save, and while the error seems to occur for different zones, I still got it. I went through and tried to purge out some AHU's and spaces that may have pushed me up against some limit I'm not aware of, but nothing's helped so far.

Below is what I'm currently zoning, and you can see that in the building footprint screen, there are zones that I've defined that aren't showing up. I'm attaching the pd2. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated!

[cid:image001.jpg at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60][cid:image002.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60]


[cid:image003.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60]Eric L. O'Neill, P.E., LEED AP
Managing Engineer - Implementation | Michaels Energy
Phone 608.785.3328 | Cell 608.792.7721
www.michaelsenergy.com<http://www.michaelsenergy.com> [cid:image004.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60] <http://facebook.com/MichaelsEnergy>  [cid:image005.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60] <http://www.linkedin.com/company/michaels-energy>  [cid:image006.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60] <http://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelsEnergy>  [cid:image007.png at 01CE9F38.0BB2DF60] <http://twitter.com/MichaelsEnergy>




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