You might know this by now, but eQUEST gets advanced sometimes and things can get rather redundant. One of the greatest things about eQUEST is that all the inputs are in text. That means you can go bonkers in a text editor and get creative in how you do things.
We have two text editing tips here.
Bonus eQUEST Tip #1: Build your own import files!
If you reuse custom items like schedules, walls, chillers, chiller curves, you can build your own library and reuse them!
All you need to do is open your eQUEST .inp file itself, locate the specific item, and then copy it and paste it into a new text file (I use notepad++ to do this). Then you can save the snippet as a txt file. Change the file extension to .inp, and you have a custom item that can be used in any future project.
When you are in detailed mode, you can go to File--> Import file, and navigate to one of your custom *.inp files and import it, so that you do not need to rebuild custom libraries.
Bonus eQUEST Tip #2: How to compare eQUEST files.
Here is a blog post I wrote if you want to know more about comparing two eQUEST files and see what an eQUEST file looks like in a text editor
Of course, the only way to get really good at eQUEST is to do play around with it. Of course, the question you may ask is "Where do I start?".... I never even mentioned our other available eQUEST courses, if you want to get your hands dirty (as they say).