[Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Mon Mar 6 15:06:15 PST 2017

I got you buddy!

Building on what Aaron just taught me/us for stringing together 8+ descriptor characters as well:

switch(#L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",0) + #L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",1))
  case "office": #SI("Office Ltg Sch","SPACE","LIGHTING-SCHEDUL")
  case "kitchen": #SI("Kitchen Ltg Sch","SPACE","LIGHTING-SCHEDUL")
  case "restroom": #SI("Restroom Ltg Sch","SPACE","LIGHTING-SCHEDUL")
  default: no_def
endswitch

Coolest thread ever?  Maybe!

~Nick

[cid:image001.png at 01D29699.2E8CAE60]
Nick Caton, P.E., BEMP
  Senior Energy Engineer
  Regional Energy Engineering Manager
  Energy and Sustainability Services
  Schneider Electric

D  913.564.6361
M  785.410.3317
F  913.564.6380
E  nicholas.caton at schneider-electric.com<mailto:nicholas.caton at schneider-electric.com>

15200 Santa Fe Trail Drive
Suite 204
Lenexa, KS 66219
United States

[cid:image002.png at 01D29699.2E8CAE60]

From: Equest-users [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Michael Campbell via Equest-users
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2017 2:53 PM
To: Aaron Powers <caaronpowers at gmail.com>
Cc: equest-users <equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org>
Subject: Re: [Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Has anyone had any luck creating default user expressions for schedules?
I was able to get it to work for other fields but when trying to use the Switch function for schedules I am getting errors.
Any advice?
Thank you,

On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 10:25 PM, Aaron Powers via Equest-users <equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org>> wrote:
To expand on Nick's trick below, I wanted to share why only the 1st 4 characters are returned by default and why his code works (this is mostly a guess from reverse-engineering the source code, but it's consistent with the way the actual program works).

Old versions of Fortran had no built-in character or string data types, so programmers had to use tricks to deal with them.  This would have been true of the dialect of Fortran used in the original DOE2.1A, and so a form of the original technique used to deal with string literals persists in the code today.  As a warning, this next part may give the mechanical engineers out there a headache...  A single character is traditionally encoded in ASCII using a single byte.  A byte is 8 bits, and the largest 8 bit number is 11111111 = 255, so you can encode 256 unique characters using a single byte.  As an example, the btye 01100001 = 97 represents the character 'a' in ASCII.  The smallest built-in data type in early Fortran was the integer (or float) which is encoded using 4 bytes.  The trick used in DOE2 is to encode string literals as an array of 8 integers (or float), and since each integer contains 4 bytes (i.e. 4 characters), the entire string array represents a total of 8x4 = 32 characters.  This is why there's a 32 character limit on string fields.  So accessing the first element of this array by #L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC") or #L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",0) returns the first 4 characters, #L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",1) returns the second 4 characters, and so on.

Now a little further into the weeds (this is more speculation into how it could be done rather than how it's actually done under the DOE2 hood).  Consider the string 'abcd'.  This can be encoded into a single integer by making the four bytes of the integer be the same as the 4 character's ASCII representation in sequence together.  So the first byte is 97(01100001), the second 98(01100010), the third 99(01100011), and the fourth 100(01100100).  Also, in Fortran, integers are encoded in little-endian style which just means that we need to order the bytes in reverse order when constructing the integer.  The entire integer in binary form is then 01100100011000110110001001100001.   The value of this integer in decimal is 1684234849.  So, in DOE2-Land, the number 1684234849 is equivalent to 'abcd'.

However, it appears that you can't access the integer representation of these four character 'words' in keyword expressions.  For example:
if ("abcd" == 1684234849) then ... produces an error.

Also, you can't do arithmetic with the integer representation.  Interestingly though, the '+' operator functions as a concatenate operator when dealing with string literals.  This can be used to compare the first 4, 8, 12, ... characters of a string.  For example, try the following code for the lighting power density of a space.  This expression considers the first 8 characters when checking the C-ACTIVITY-DESC field.  This could be expanded to check all 32 characters, although the code would get a little bloated.

switch(#L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",0) + #L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",1))
  case "office": 1.1
  case "kitchen": 1.5
  case "restroom": 0.7
  default: 1.0
endswitch

In this code, the result when C-ACTIVITY-DESC = "office" is 1.1, but the result when C-ACTIVITY-DESC = "office1" is 1.0.

Aaron

From: Nicholas Caton [mailto:Nicholas.Caton at schneider-electric.com<mailto:Nicholas.Caton at schneider-electric.com>]
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2017 4:04 PM
To: Bishop, Bill <bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com<mailto:bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com>>; Chris Jones <Christopher.Jones at RWDI.com<mailto:Christopher.Jones at RWDI.com>>; Michael Campbell <mcamp1206 at gmail.com<mailto:mcamp1206 at gmail.com>>
Cc: equest-users at onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at onebuilding.org>
Subject: RE: [Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Appending to this, while ("C-ACTIVITY-DESC") returns the first 4 characters by default, if you ever need to further distinguish inputs within spaces sharing the same/similar activity descriptors, you can also reference the 2nd set of 4 characters (or the 3rd set, or the 4th set…).

To do this, append the optional argument “,#” wherever you’d normally specify “C-ACTIVITY-DESC.”

To build on the running example, say you had 2 tenants to distinguish in a building with “Retail” space, but they had two different occupancy densities.  You could handle that by first adding to their descriptors, such as follows:
Retail_–_Best Buy
Retail_–_Home Depot

The first 4 characters for each case are the same:  “RETA” (list position 0).  The second set of 4 is “IL_–“ (list position 1).  The third set is finally distinguishable:  “_BES” and “_HOM” (list position 2).

From here you could either insert an if/then statement for the “Reta” case, or just nest another switch statement.  Added some formatting for clarity, but highlightedthe new addition:

   AREA/PERSON      =
{if(#SV(#L("ZONE-TYPE"))==2) then no_def else
  if(#RV(#L("PEOPLE-SCHEDULE"))!=0) then unused else
  switch (#L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC"))
    case "Reta": switch (#L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC",2))
                   case “_Bes” : 67
                   case “_Hom” : 67*2
                   default : 500
                 endswitch
    case "Lobb": 150
    case "Clas": 100
    default: 500
  endswitch
  endif
endif}

~Nick

[cid:image001.png at 01D29699.2E8CAE60]
Nick Caton, P.E., BEMP
  Senior Energy Engineer
  Regional Energy Engineering Manager
  Energy and Sustainability Services
  Schneider Electric

D  913.564.6361<tel:(913)%20564-6361>
M  785.410.3317<tel:(785)%20410-3317>
F  913.564.6380<tel:(913)%20564-6380>
E  nicholas.caton at schneider-electric.com<mailto:nicholas.caton at schneider-electric.com>

15200 Santa Fe Trail Drive
Suite 204
Lenexa, KS 66219
United States

[cid:image002.png at 01D29699.2E8CAE60]

From: Equest-users [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Bishop, Bill via Equest-users
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2017 12:24 PM
To: Chris Jones <Christopher.Jones at RWDI.com<mailto:Christopher.Jones at RWDI.com>>; Michael Campbell <mcamp1206 at gmail.com<mailto:mcamp1206 at gmail.com>>
Cc: equest-users at onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at onebuilding.org>
Subject: Re: [Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Mike,
You can start with the expression below. Paste only the text between the brackets if you are pasting within the interface. If pasting into the input file, this would go after “SET-DEFAULT FOR SPACE”. Like Chris said, the case statement names should be four characters or less. However, they are not case sensitive, so upper/lower case doesn’t matter.
~Bill

   AREA/PERSON      =
{if(#SV(#L("ZONE-TYPE"))==2) then no_def else
if(#RV(#L("PEOPLE-SCHEDULE"))!=0) then unused else
switch (#L("C-ACTIVITY-DESC"))
case "Reta": 67
case "Lobb": 150
case "Clas": 100
default: 500
endswitch
endif
endif}

William Bishop, PE, BEMP, BEAP, CEM, LEED AP | Pathfinder Engineers & Architects LLP
Senior Energy Engineer

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134 South Fitzhugh Street                 Rochester, NY 14608

T: (585) 698-1956<tel:(585)%20698-1956>                        F: (585) 325-6005<tel:(585)%20325-6005>

bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com<mailto:wbishop at pathfinder-ea.com>             www.pathfinder-ea.com<http://www.pathfinder-ea.com/>

[http://png-5.findicons.com/files/icons/977/rrze/720/globe.png]Carbon Fee and Dividend - simple, effective, and market-based.

From: Equest-users [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Chris Jones via Equest-users
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2017 12:52 PM
To: Michael Campbell <mcamp1206 at gmail.com<mailto:mcamp1206 at gmail.com>>
Cc: equest-users at onebuilding.org<mailto:equest-users at onebuilding.org>
Subject: Re: [Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Note, only the first 4 characters of the C-ACTIVITY-DESC field are recognized in user defined expressions. Therefore, if your UDF uses “RETAIL” as the test, it may fail because only “RETA” is used.

Other than that, I suggest reviewing the BDLDFT.TXT file in the eQUEST 3-65 Data folder. It is full of example default expressions.

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Christopher Jones, P.Eng. | Senior Energy Analyst
RWDI
901 King Street West, Suite 400, Toronto, ON M5V 3H5 Canada
Tel: (519) 823-1311 ext 2052<tel:(519)%20823-1311>
rwdi.com<http://www.rwdi.com/>

From: Equest-users [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Michael Campbell via Equest-users
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2017 12:32 PM
To: equest-users
Subject: [Equest-users] User-Defined Default Expressions

Hi eQUEST Users,
I'm trying to create default user expressions in an effort to auto-populate certain fields in my models.
I want to reference the activity description (C-ACTIVITY-DESC) have it automatically fill in fields such as Area/Person.
So for this example, I'm trying to make all spaces that have Activity Description of "RETAIL" to be populated with a Area/Person value of 67.
I've tried using the "Switch" function and if-then statements but haven't been able to get it to work.
Any assistance is appreciated.
Thank you,
Mike Campbell
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