Hello all!

I have been experimenting with converting Revit files to eQuest .inp files
through Green Building Studio and I have not had much luck so far. I have
read through the presentation that Glumac gave for BSUG and it seems that
their process is to recreate the building in Revit by tracing over a CAD
floor plan. They and many other sources have mentioned that you should not
try to just convert an Architect's Revit file directly because it is too
complex.

Of course the very first thing that I tried was to do just that and convert
a small school that we did directly to .inp and it did not work. Many
things were missing. it was basically just a huge mess and not would not
work as a functional eQuest file.

So I have just tried following their instructions with starting from scratch
and building a new model by tracing the CAD plans of a small field house
that we are doing. I do have to say that creating the model in Revit
instead of eQuest was much easier, no counterclockwise tracing and if you
mess up things are very easy to fix. So after creating all the walls,
ceiling, floor and roof I created the spaces in Revit (I have been told that
these should transfer directly over to eQuest as Zones). When I exported
the gbxml file to GBStudio there were no problems noted with the file.

After using GBStudio to convert the file to a .inp file I opened it in
eQuest. It did not have any problems opening the file but boy was it a
mess. It created one zone for the entire building (obviously not how I
zoned it in Revit). All of the exterior walls for the plenum spaces, the
roof and some of the normal walls came in as Building Shades in eQuest. All
interior walls came into eQuest labeled as exterior walls (this may be a
result of the wall type that I selected in Revit which was just a generic 8"
wall). The floor did not come into eQuest at all. Basically the overall
shape of the building is there but many many things are missing. You can
see the picture below on the left is the Revit file while the one on the
right is the eQuest file.

Anyhow, if anyone has experience dealing with Revit to eQuest conversion
issues or has successfully completed a conversion without problems I would
love to hear from you! Hopefully this can start a good conversation on
whether or not trying to convert Revit files (even simplistic ones) to
eQuest is even worth trying. I must admit that I am still on the fence but
am leaning in the direction of it not being worth the trouble unless I can
figure out how to work out these issues.

Thanks in advance!

David P. Hostetter, E.I.T.