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Hey There,

The workflow that @mdahlhausen @David Goldwasser are awesome and I may try them out here and their documentation is definite the way to do. But I thought I'd post the email that I gave to my CO-OP student on how to start/stop AWS from PAT. It may be what you need. I've added a few steps / links so set up your AWS account. Note: These instructions have been used Nov 10, 2018 using PAT 2.6.0

Set up your AWS Account

You only have to do this once to get your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. Think of this as your username and password that you will give to PAT to access AWS. After you have set up your AWS account..it takes us about 10 minutes to spin up a cluster on Amazon. Usually enough time to get a cup of coffee.

1) Create an AWS Account. This will give you some free hours to play with. You will need to enter a credit card after you exhaust the trial. https://aws.amazon.com/free/

2) To find your Access Key and Secret Access Key:

Log in to your AWS Management Console here
Click on your user name at the top right of the page.
Click on the Security Credentials link from the drop-down menu.
Expand the "Access keys (access key ID and secret access key)" horizontal tab.
Click "Create New Access Key"
Click "Download Key File". This will contain the user credentials that you will use in PAT 2.6

Start AWS from PAT

Launch PAT
Go to the Run tab (The button on the left with the "play" button)
Select "Run On the Cloud" on the top
Enter a name that you wish for the Analysis in "Analysis Name"
Choose the AMI Name version of OpenStudio you wish to use. I like to use 2.6.0 until 2.7.0 is stable. So you may select that.
Click 'New Cluster' and name your cluster setting name whatever you wish.
Select C3.8XLarge for server instance type. This is a pretty decent for runs.
Select C3.8XLarge for worker instance type.
Enter in how many workers you want..This is subjective on how fast you want your cluster to be and how much you want to spend an hour. Each C3.8XLarge is ~1.70$/hour
Under AWS UserID put your name for example I just put my first name down. This is used as an identifier, but rarely used.
Under the AWS Credentials, click new and enter any name to identify your aws account, the Access Key, and the Secret Access key that you downloaded in the previous section.
Click Start Cluster and wait a few minutes for the server status to turn from blue to green.. when it is started you can click the view server to view the server webpage. Now you can start to run workflows with measures and view progress by refreshing the web page.

Stop AWS

Click the View AWS Console Button
login with your regular aws account (email/password)
Find the "compute" section and click on EC
There should be X Running instances where X is the number of workers + server that you started. Click on it. This will open the instances console.
You will see a list of the computers instances running.
Go back to PAT and hit terminate. This will send the kill signal to AWS.
Wait for it to say the give information that the server status is red with an x in it.
Go back to your AWS EC Webpage console hit refresh to ensure everything is stopped.

That's it! If this is wrong, let me know, but it still works for us.

On a side note: I was able to hire an aerospace engineering student from a local university to do these runs and collect results for us on a weekly basis for our simulations. Some of the new generation student engineers are incredibly computer savvy, I now seek these kinds of students out exclusively for simulation work. If you give them a workflow to start...and ask if they can improve on it.. You may be surprised what they can do.