Interior/Exterior Walls in the DD Wizard

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Hi all,

I am working in the DD Wizard and just built my footprint and zones. When I go to enter in the glass information, eQuest is telling me that I don't have all of my zones defined and do I really want to define the glass. When I say yes, it take me into the Custom Window Placement View, but a couple of the walls are not shown as exterior:

[cid:image001.png at 01CB0276.557F8C90][cid:image002.png at 01CB0276.557F8C90][cid:image003.png at 01CB0276.557F8C90][cid:image004.png at 01CB0276.557F8C90]

When I check these walls in the Component Tree, it's telling me that they are Interior walls, instead of Exterior. I have rebuilt these particular zones a few different times now and it keeps thinking they are interior walls. Am I doing something wrong for the software to think they're Interior walls, or can I change them to Exterior walls in the wizard? Thanks in advance for the help.

Kristy M. Walson, PE, LEED AP

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Make sure that you have vertices on your building footprint to match the zone vertices that lie on the exterior wall.

Kelsey Van Tassel

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Kristy,

Cool footprint. I've had this problem before. To remedy this issue, I
make a vertex wherever I am planning to have a zone boundary in the
building footprint option. For example, if you drew a straight line from
one edge of a wall to another, instead of stopping where the building
zone intersects the exterior, eQuest might not recognize that this zone
has an exterior wall.

Therefore, as you trace the building footprint, make a vertex whenever
an exterior zone boundary intersects a building wall. Then, as you lay
out zones, trace the exterior zones and use the "Polygon" as your first
Snap priority.

Hope this helps.

Gordon D. Schweitzer III, LEED AP BD+C

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Gord has a good point, you want to establish all your vertices's on
your ground floor and carry them through your model and floors. That
way you can snap to them and it minimizes errors. It can help to print
out your cad plan and keep track of the points, even the snap can mess
up, but you can double click the point and adjust it if you have to then
continue on. Turn off snap to grid. You can erase points and try
again. eQuest is VERY particular on this.
As a suggestion I don't think you want to go through the hassle and
time of inputing your windows at this stage. You can spend hours at it
and if (when) you have to go back you will lose all that work. Just put
them in crude as % of the wall area. Later, you can make a window or a
few and paste them all over your model in detailed edit. Remember, this
is a thermo model, not a pretty picture. All that matters are areas,
layers, exposure. The only other thing that really matters is, will it
run and not crash. You, at this point have quite a few untidy deals
which eQuest doesn't like. Lots of "save as" with new file names so you
go back a little not to the beginning.
One thing I have found in the last few days, I've got 40 hours into
a complicated box right now, not even pressed the simulate button yet,
is to save your model, close eQuest, and open your model again. This
will generate a new BDL error report. Set it to run through everything,
no checks in the boxes. Good luck!
Bruce Easterbrook P.Eng.

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