eQuest Convertor

For early users starting to move over to Better Building in preparation for our ASHRAE 90.1 Section 11 and Appendix G launch in January, we've made life considerably easier. Instead of rebuilding your models from scratch, we've created an in-house eQUEST to EnergyPlus geometry converter, and we'll help you migrate your last project as part of our onboarding process.

Why We Built This

eQUEST and EnergyPlus speak different languages when it comes to geometry. Completely different. eQUEST's DOE-2 engine uses simplified building shells with automatic surface generation, you sketch floor-by-floor footprints and the software handles the rest. EnergyPlus requires every surface explicitly defined with precise three-dimensional vertex coordinates. Every wall, floor, ceiling, window, and door needs its own coordinate set with proper orientation and adjacency relationships manually specified.

We've watched modelers spend weeks manually translating mid-sized buildings, entering thousands of coordinate points, only to discover geometry errors that crash simulations. A single transposed digit, one reversed surface normal, window coordinates slightly outside their parent wall, any of these silent mistakes corrupt your results or halt analysis entirely. For a typical commercial building with dozens of zones, this geometry reconstruction alone can consume a week or more before you even start addressing HVAC systems, schedules, or loads.

That's not how migration should work. You've already invested the engineering effort defining your building geometry. Your eQUEST model contains the physical reality of your project—validated floor areas, accurate window-to-wall ratios, correct orientations, proper zone configurations. Throwing that away to manually rebuild in a new platform wastes your expertise and introduces unnecessary risk.

What the Converter Does

Our converter reads your eQUEST INP files and automatically reconstructs the building geometry as valid EnergyPlus surfaces. It translates your shell definitions into explicit surface objects with mathematically precise vertex coordinates, establishes proper adjacency relationships between zones, correctly orients all surfaces with outward-facing normals, and places fenestration with accurate dimensional relationships to parent walls. The geometry arrives clean, validated, and ready for simulation.

This is geometry translation done right. No manual coordinate entry. No transcription errors. No wondering if your zones are properly connected or if that window is actually where you think it is. The converter applies tested algorithms to generate valid EnergyPlus geometry that matches your eQUEST building definition with mathematical precision.

You'll still need to configure your HVAC systems, assign schedules, and define loads in Better Building, but you're doing that with accurate building geometry already in place, not starting from a blank file spending days just getting walls and windows positioned correctly.

What This Means for Your Practice

You can transition to Better Building without the geometry rebuild bottleneck. Bring forward your most recent project's building form, compare thermal performance between platforms using geometry you know is accurate, and build confidence in the new tool without questioning whether geometric discrepancies are affecting results.

For projects moving through design phases, the converter means maintaining geometric consistency from design development through construction documentation, even when switching platforms mid-project. When explaining energy performance changes to clients, you can confidently attribute differences to actual design modifications, HVAC strategies, or operational assumptions, not platform migration artifacts or geometric interpretation differences.

For LEED submissions or code compliance documentation, you maintain clear geometric lineage. The building envelope in Better Building is the same building envelope from your eQUEST model, just translated into EnergyPlus's more explicit surface representation.

Available Now for Early Users

The geometry converter is ready. As part of onboarding, we'll work with you to migrate your last project's building geometry, ensuring the translation handles your specific modeling conventions and that you're comfortable with how Better Building represents your envelope. We're transparent about this being a bridge to our January launch because it matters that you have time to learn the platform, configure your systems, and validate your workflows before compliance deadlines hit.

No geometry rebuilding required. Just better building performance analysis with the simulation rigor of EnergyPlus and the workflow efficiency you need.