I think it was Mark Twain who said "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
I note a (presumably working) demonstration of the CanQuest software is on the slate for the ESim conference in Halifax next week. See page 14 of the ESim Program posted here: http://esim.ca/
The Mark Twain quote is most appropriate. Thank you Chris. Our group rarely participates in these forums, but I felt some response to this somewhat annoying rumor was needed. Some of the discussion also brings to mind another familiar proverb: a bad workman always blames his tools. But also I am reminded that, if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. So I add to the ?controversy? here.
eQUEST and DOE-2 are alive and well and our combined development efforts are at an equal or higher funding and effort level than ever before. However, we will continue to provide all our DOE-2 and eQUEST products as freeware to the simulation communities around the world. We support the overall community activities so that the community can offer analysis and support services to derive income based upon use of our products.
We tend not to compete with the community by offering those same analyses and support services ourselves with the exception of providing eQUEST and DOE-2 training. Thus we as a group do not normally offer fee based support services except to a small group of our long-term clients who also generally support our development efforts ? we leave those fee based support service opportunities to you, the user community, as an income source.
With thousands of eQUEST and DOE-2 installation around the world, we receive too many emails per day to possibly respond. We especially cannot respond to standard support requests as that request should be directed to those offering fee based support services. We try to pay attention and examine requests when program bugs or errors are suspected. But quite often we need to delay any fixes to the next program release. Our focus on DOE-2.3 and program develop environment changes for both eQUEST and DOE-2 has slowed our releases for the past two years. That will change this year, so be patient please.
We do not develop eQUEST or DOE-2 using a license fee income based model. Rather we develop our tools to support the analysis needs of our major clients and the general user community. We have no plans to change our model. Like all software, eQUEST and DOE-2 will have quirks, bugs and limitations. No realistic or truthful company offering software could claim otherwise. However, we plan to continue making improvements and have the resources to do so.
What is coming? Several things are coming in the next year. DOE-2.3 has been in beta for some time. We will release that new version when we are confident it can be used in production work in place of DOE-2.2. A version of eQUEST that fully supports DOE-2.3 that will be released at the same time. DOE-2.2 is also still under development, but we tend to implement all major new features in DOE-2.3 rather than DOE-2.2. We expect to release an update to both eQUEST and DOE-2.2 soon with DOE-2.3 and its eQUEST version later. The DOE-2.2 refrigeration version development continues, however more priority has been placed on DOE-2.3 recently; however, we will also release an update to that application as well and we consider that version an important product to continue to upgrade well into the future.
I am not sure why rumors of the impending death of DOE-2, that started in the late 1990?s, continue to persist since the evidence for the past fifteen years should have proven those rumors wrong. Similarly, the rumors about the death of eQUEST that have appeared more recently can be also similarly be ignored as completely false. The real history shows that our DOE-2 and eQUEST products have proven to have more funding and longevity ?legs? than any other existing similar software. While other development groups struggle to advance one simulation program or one user interface we have shown that our group can do both the engine and interface with major advances to both for decades and as freeware. I see no change coming in our ability to continue the upgrade of both in the current decade.
You should, as a community, be more concerned with the long term viability of other groups making big claims that have a long way to go before they can claim to be offering the simulation community the mature, stable, reliable capabilities free as you get from our products. It is much easier for a developer to claim their product can do amazing things than it is for the user community to realize those possible gains while maintaining the ability to deliver services to their clients competitively in a timely manner. We plan to do our best to continue to offer you products that allow you to perform your job or earn a living, and keep your clients satisfied. In return we ask for your continued support, patience and generally good vibes. We also ask that you continue to support one another in this and other forums, as the freeware nature of our products requires the user community to hang together and exchange information and ideas.
With that, I return to my observation deck.
ps ? For some reason I and others in my group do not get all the emails from this forum ? of the multiple emails Mr. Crossett sent to the forum and myself below I received none but I did, obviously see the one I am now responding to. Not sure of the cause, but I do get hundreds of emails per day and cannot even open many.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Hirsch
While your waiting for the release of canQuest, or any other piece of
software, entertain yourself by reading "The Mythical Man-Month",
Fred Brooks, ISBN
0-201-83595-9
Thanks Jeff, it would be impossible to meet the demands of the
building energy simulation needs without the "free" versions of
DOE2. The price for a free, open box engine is quirkiness but you
get the power of control if you take the time to understand the
abilities and limitations of the tool.
If you'll look to the archives you'll see many have asked the same question. I and others have responded to many of these repeat queries with a cohesive answer: those of us who have invested the time to explore the 90.1 compliance tool have concluded it is a work in progress at best. The documentation specific to using the compliance ruleset says as much, and it is quite true.
If you asked the mailing lists in the past and got no response, I'm personally sorry if that caused any bad feelings but that unfortunately is the nature of the beast at times: the supply/demand ratio for individuals with enough time to help out a stranger doesn't always favor those with the questions - that's a primary reason the archives are so important as a support resource.
Everyone:
Knowing what the compliance tools presently accomplish, I have myself resolved to generally advise others to avoid using it entirely in its current state, for any project on a tight deadline. Newer users especially are better off and will save time focusing on learning to build their own baselines from their proposed models, until this set of features is further along.
I would encourage more intermediate/advanced users to give these compliance options a try, explore the implicit workflow adaptations, and draw/learn from how baselines are put together in an automated fashion - but *not* on a real project with a pending deadline. You might very well pick up a few "aha!" tips along the way that save yourself time and improve/enlighten your understanding of modeling for LEED, but don't count on the compliance tools to be a timesaver or even totally function for a given project.
A LEED feature I DO recommend all users trying, whether you are using the compliance ruleset or not: File -> Export File -> LEED Results
This is something everyone should stop and experience once with a completed project. Depending on how long you've been working with LEED+eQuest - this could be a real timesaver if adapted into your workflow. The time in a workflow you would use this in an active project would be upon finishing your proposed and baseline models (with rotations), and before beginning to tackle the LEED templates. The resulting file pulls a lot of inputs together I am used to printing a stack of reports to draw from.
I hope development of LEED features in future eQuest releases fleshes this area out further - exporting a "LEED input report" for uploading to LEED Online would be great. At first I thought this would be unreasonable/unwieldy, but I have input to share on this front if this seems within reason for the development team.
Thank you very much for the development the status update and clarifying a number of issues re: support and your team?s business model. Much of this is news to me.
As eQuest/DOE updates become available, I trust we?ll get a heads up here on the onebuilding.org lists ? are there any other venues where your team is providing status updates in the interim?
Thanks again for taking the time to set the record straight,
All:
I think it was Mark Twain who said "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
I note a (presumably working) demonstration of the CanQuest software is on the slate for the ESim conference in Halifax next week. See page 14 of the ESim Program posted here: http://esim.ca/
All the Best,
_Chris
Chris Balbach, PE, CEM, CMVP, BEAP, BESA, BEMP
The Mark Twain quote is most appropriate. Thank you Chris. Our group rarely participates in these forums, but I felt some response to this somewhat annoying rumor was needed. Some of the discussion also brings to mind another familiar proverb: a bad workman always blames his tools. But also I am reminded that, if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. So I add to the ?controversy? here.
eQUEST and DOE-2 are alive and well and our combined development efforts are at an equal or higher funding and effort level than ever before. However, we will continue to provide all our DOE-2 and eQUEST products as freeware to the simulation communities around the world. We support the overall community activities so that the community can offer analysis and support services to derive income based upon use of our products.
We tend not to compete with the community by offering those same analyses and support services ourselves with the exception of providing eQUEST and DOE-2 training. Thus we as a group do not normally offer fee based support services except to a small group of our long-term clients who also generally support our development efforts ? we leave those fee based support service opportunities to you, the user community, as an income source.
With thousands of eQUEST and DOE-2 installation around the world, we receive too many emails per day to possibly respond. We especially cannot respond to standard support requests as that request should be directed to those offering fee based support services. We try to pay attention and examine requests when program bugs or errors are suspected. But quite often we need to delay any fixes to the next program release. Our focus on DOE-2.3 and program develop environment changes for both eQUEST and DOE-2 has slowed our releases for the past two years. That will change this year, so be patient please.
We do not develop eQUEST or DOE-2 using a license fee income based model. Rather we develop our tools to support the analysis needs of our major clients and the general user community. We have no plans to change our model. Like all software, eQUEST and DOE-2 will have quirks, bugs and limitations. No realistic or truthful company offering software could claim otherwise. However, we plan to continue making improvements and have the resources to do so.
What is coming? Several things are coming in the next year. DOE-2.3 has been in beta for some time. We will release that new version when we are confident it can be used in production work in place of DOE-2.2. A version of eQUEST that fully supports DOE-2.3 that will be released at the same time. DOE-2.2 is also still under development, but we tend to implement all major new features in DOE-2.3 rather than DOE-2.2. We expect to release an update to both eQUEST and DOE-2.2 soon with DOE-2.3 and its eQUEST version later. The DOE-2.2 refrigeration version development continues, however more priority has been placed on DOE-2.3 recently; however, we will also release an update to that application as well and we consider that version an important product to continue to upgrade well into the future.
I am not sure why rumors of the impending death of DOE-2, that started in the late 1990?s, continue to persist since the evidence for the past fifteen years should have proven those rumors wrong. Similarly, the rumors about the death of eQUEST that have appeared more recently can be also similarly be ignored as completely false. The real history shows that our DOE-2 and eQUEST products have proven to have more funding and longevity ?legs? than any other existing similar software. While other development groups struggle to advance one simulation program or one user interface we have shown that our group can do both the engine and interface with major advances to both for decades and as freeware. I see no change coming in our ability to continue the upgrade of both in the current decade.
You should, as a community, be more concerned with the long term viability of other groups making big claims that have a long way to go before they can claim to be offering the simulation community the mature, stable, reliable capabilities free as you get from our products. It is much easier for a developer to claim their product can do amazing things than it is for the user community to realize those possible gains while maintaining the ability to deliver services to their clients competitively in a timely manner. We plan to do our best to continue to offer you products that allow you to perform your job or earn a living, and keep your clients satisfied. In return we ask for your continued support, patience and generally good vibes. We also ask that you continue to support one another in this and other forums, as the freeware nature of our products requires the user community to hang together and exchange information and ideas.
With that, I return to my observation deck.
ps ? For some reason I and others in my group do not get all the emails from this forum ? of the multiple emails Mr. Crossett sent to the forum and myself below I received none but I did, obviously see the one I am now responding to. Not sure of the cause, but I do get hundreds of emails per day and cannot even open many.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Hirsch
While your waiting for the release of canQuest, or any other piece of
ISBN
software, entertain yourself by reading "The Mythical Man-Month",
Fred Brooks,
0-201-83595-9
>> Christopher Jones, P.Eng.
Thanks Jeff, it would be impossible to meet the demands of the
building energy simulation needs without the "free" versions of
DOE2. The price for a free, open box engine is quirkiness but you
get the power of control if you take the time to understand the
abilities and limitations of the tool.
>> Christopher Jones, P.Eng.
Jeremiah to your original query:
If you'll look to the archives you'll see many have asked the same question. I and others have responded to many of these repeat queries with a cohesive answer: those of us who have invested the time to explore the 90.1 compliance tool have concluded it is a work in progress at best. The documentation specific to using the compliance ruleset says as much, and it is quite true.
If you asked the mailing lists in the past and got no response, I'm personally sorry if that caused any bad feelings but that unfortunately is the nature of the beast at times: the supply/demand ratio for individuals with enough time to help out a stranger doesn't always favor those with the questions - that's a primary reason the archives are so important as a support resource.
Everyone:
Knowing what the compliance tools presently accomplish, I have myself resolved to generally advise others to avoid using it entirely in its current state, for any project on a tight deadline. Newer users especially are better off and will save time focusing on learning to build their own baselines from their proposed models, until this set of features is further along.
I would encourage more intermediate/advanced users to give these compliance options a try, explore the implicit workflow adaptations, and draw/learn from how baselines are put together in an automated fashion - but *not* on a real project with a pending deadline. You might very well pick up a few "aha!" tips along the way that save yourself time and improve/enlighten your understanding of modeling for LEED, but don't count on the compliance tools to be a timesaver or even totally function for a given project.
A LEED feature I DO recommend all users trying, whether you are using the compliance ruleset or not: File -> Export File -> LEED Results
This is something everyone should stop and experience once with a completed project. Depending on how long you've been working with LEED+eQuest - this could be a real timesaver if adapted into your workflow. The time in a workflow you would use this in an active project would be upon finishing your proposed and baseline models (with rotations), and before beginning to tackle the LEED templates. The resulting file pulls a lot of inputs together I am used to printing a stack of reports to draw from.
I hope development of LEED features in future eQuest releases fleshes this area out further - exporting a "LEED input report" for uploading to LEED Online would be great. At first I thought this would be unreasonable/unwieldy, but I have input to share on this front if this seems within reason for the development team.
~Nick
[cid:489575314 at 22072009-0ABB]
NICK CATON, P.E.
Jeff, your input is *extremely* appreciated!
Thank you very much for the development the status update and clarifying a number of issues re: support and your team?s business model. Much of this is news to me.
As eQuest/DOE updates become available, I trust we?ll get a heads up here on the onebuilding.org lists ? are there any other venues where your team is providing status updates in the interim?
Thanks again for taking the time to set the record straight,
~Nick
[cid:489575314 at 22072009-0ABB]
NICK CATON, P.E.
Hi Jeff,
Your comments beg the question: what's new in DOE-2.3? Details please!
Shaun
Shaun Martin LEED AP