Online Help System

EnergyGauge has an extensive and informative contextual online Help system.  Help will answer virtually any question users may have and will provide advice and valuable assistance for first time users.  It is highly recommended that users review Help's Program Overview before they attempt to use the software for the first time.  It is also recommended that users try to solve problems using the online Help system prior to seeking technical support.  There are very few questions that can not be answered using EnergyGauge's detailed online Help system. 

The online Help system can be accessed in three ways: 

• For each screen in the software, page help is available through the right mouse button. 
• For context sensitive help on a particular entry field, click the cursor in the entry field, then press F1.
• For the Help system table of contents or help regarding Florida's Energy Code compliance requirements, click the Help menu button on the top bar of the screen, then select "Contents" or "Florida Code Compliance Manual" from the pull-down Help menu.  This allows users to access the complete EnergyGauge table of contents or the online version of the Florida Energy Code Compliance Manual. 

Project Search Screen

This is the main screen and always appears first when you start the program.  This screen is used to create new projects or to load existing projects. All buildings are stored in a single database table (not in individual "flat" files) called the Project table.  Individual projects (buildings) can, however, be saved to "flat" files and re-loaded into the Project table.  These "flat" files are called "*.ENB files". 

The Project Search Results section shows the selected buildings in the Project table (all projects or just those that were requested by a search query).   To select a listed project, just double-click on it or highlight it and click on the open button. 

The File menu on the top bar is used to delete a building from the Project table, to set user preferences for default selections, or to exit the program. 

The Project Notebook

Once a project is selected (or a new one created) and loaded, it appears in the Project Notebook.  The Project Notebook consists of 10 individual screens.  The screen which appears first contains general project information and is called the Project page.  The remaining 9 screens consist of one screen each for the building envelope components and one screen each for the cooling, heating, duct and hot water systems. 

Project Page

The Project page is the first screen to appear when a project is loaded into the Project Notebook.  It contains all the general information about the project. Once the critical information (Number of Bedrooms, Conditioned Area and Total Number of Stories) are entered into the Project page, other pages are accessible in any order desired through the Page buttons at the bottom of each page. 
 

Component Pages
 
All Notebook pages, save the Project page have a very similar design.  The top portion of the screen contains all the user editable fields, the center portion contains a navigator bar and the component records table, and the bottom portion contains a calculation window that allows users to quickly determine the Florida Energy Code compliance implications of the choices that have been entered for the component in question.  The windows page is the most complex of the ccomponent pages and is shown below as an example.
 

The right mouse button allows users to duplicate or delete selected records, and for the windows page it allows users to change the tinting and type of all the entered windows simultaneously. 

The Main Menu Bar
 
The main menu bar is located at the top of each page in the Project Notebook directly below the Title bar.  The Title bar contains the program version and model followed by the name of the Project that is currently loaded in the Project Notebook. The main menu bar consists of the following options: 

• File allows users to Save or "Save As" the current project to the Project table, to Close projects, to create "flat" files (*.ENB files) that are saved to disk in ASCII format, to set user default Preferences, or to Exit the software.

• View allows users to hide or show the Calculate Code Points bar and the Hint bar.  When one or both of these bars are hidden, the Components table expands to take up the additional screen space.

• Calculate contains much of the power of ENERGYGAUGE.  It allows users to compute and view Energy Code compliance results and is the entry point for Florida's Home Energy Rating System (available only to certified Florida Raters).  In EnergyGauge Pro it is also the entry point for the automated Optimization, Improvement Analysis and Systems Sizing features of the software.

• Reports menu provides entry to the Reports Notebook segment of the software.  Many of the reports produced by EnergyGauge are created by the Reports Notebook.  They are created "on the fly" only as they are needed, so an intermediate Calculation Selection Screen must be completed before the Reports Notebook can be reached.

After the calculations have been selected, the user enters the Reports Notebook: 
 



From here users can print the required output forms for Code compliance and Home Energy Ratings (HERS). Information about Florida's Home Energy Rating System can be found at www.fsec.ucf.edu/ratings/.
 

• Registration of each Energy Rating is required prior to printing of the rating output reports.  However, printing of Energy Code compliance reports does not require registration.

• Help is extensive in EnergyGauge.  The Help menu shown below provides access to the Contents of the online Help system and to Florida's Energy Code Complaince Manual.  In addition to the menu selections full contextural online help is available through the F1 key for any editable field within the software.