I only want to make sure I'm going about this in the correct manner.

The project I'm using to teach myself this program is a largish elementary school. I've made a few models with simplified zoning, and they worked alright. I wanted to graduate to custom zoning, with system types that might better reflect our typical design (Parallel VAV in classroom blocks, single zone VAV in cafeteria/gym, etc).

I traced my CAD file for the envelope and preliminary zoning plan, and set up a couple air-side systems (all in the DD wizard). I skipped over the "area allocation" dialog, because I discovered that the "zone groups" dialog allows you to override area allocations per zone group. So, I set up a classroom zone group, and added each classroom zone to it, an office zone group, etc... I changed the area allocation in the zone group dialog for each zone group to reflect the zone usage. At this point, does eQuest pretty much ignore entire building area allocation numbers in the formal "area allocation" dialog, because I have custom allocation profiles set up for each zone group? I did this because the unless I'm mistaken, eQuest only allows you to assign systems to zone groups, not individual zones. The model is coming up short, and this method of zone/system assignment just seems wrong to me. Am I doing this correctly?

Related question: does eQuest allow you to set up occupancy profiles for each zone, so that occupancy diversity (flow of children from classrooms to cafeteria, etc) can be modeled?

Thank you guys. Lurking the list for past couple weeks has been very informative. Have a good weekend.

Cole Hudson, E.I.T.