Piggybacking a little off of Bill's post from earlier this week on keyword
expressions, I wanted to get people thinking about the possibilities/pros
and cons if one is able to add custom keywords and expressions (i.e. in
addition to the one's packaged with the standard eQuest release). In my
opinion, this is a huge advantage to eQuest/DOE2 in that the interface can
be tweaked for individual preferences without changing the underlying
calculations. As an example (and for anyone brave enough to try it out,
I've attached a modified BDLKEY.BIN and BDLDFT.DAT file which go in your
DOE23 folder as well as a modified BDLDialogs file which goes in the
ScreensDOE23 folder), this modified BDLKEY file includes an additional
numeric keyword for windows called WWR(window to wall ratio). Now assuming
that you have no more than one window defined per exterior wall, the BDLDFT
file can be edited to include the following expressions:

SET-DEFAULT FOR WINDOW
HEIGHT {SQRT(#L("WWR"))*#P("HEIGHT")}
WIDTH {SQRT(#L("WWR"))*#P("WIDTH")}
X {0.5*(#P("WIDTH") -#L("WIDTH" ))}
Y {0.5*(#P("HEIGHT") -#L("HEIGHT" ))}
..

Now the size and position of individual windows are controlled by a single
parameter, which is bound to each particular window (assuming you allow the
4 parameters above to default).

[image: image.png]

The major downside is that this is no longer complies with the standard
release, and one could end up with a nearly infinite number of eQuest
flavors depending on modifications to the keyword file. Sharing files and
QCing years after the fact could become a nightmare. A possible solution
to this problem would be the ability to add keywords on the fly, the way
that global parameters are, which are associated with individual .inp files
and not with the program itself.