All,

This started out to be a question, but in the course of making it
intelligible I discovered the answer.

My objective was to set the user default expression for fin tube
radiation to something like 30 BTUH per square foot in each zone.
However I couldn't figure out how to get the AREA defined by the SPACE
which corresponds to the ZONE into the zone's user expression...

SPACE is not a parent, grandparent or great grandparent of a ZONE -- and
the #P (Parent) funtion was on the frontier of my BDL knowledge. So
after a couple hours of headbanging while reading the "KEYWORD
EXPRESSIONS / BDL Functions" subsection of the "Building Description
Language" chapter of the DOE-2.2 Vol 3: 'Topics' manual, I was ready to
throw in the towel and ask the group, as nothing was coming up on an
archive search.

But in the process of writing this e-mail, I chanced to read the #LR
(LocalRef) definition one last time and the light bulb went on. So here
it is, a very simple user default expression for zone fin tube radiation
HEATING-CAPACITY, set to 30 BTUH per square foot (negative sign req'd by
convention):

#LR("SPACE","AREA")*-30 $ as entered into eQuest

HEATING-CAPACITY = {#LR("SPACE","AREA")*-30} $ as stored in the .inp
file

Enjoy, my head is still hurting...

Brandon Nichols, PE, LEED(r) AP