Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
OpenStudio does not "replace" anything in EnergyPlus per se. OpenStudio and the Application specifically are separate software tools that leverage EnergyPlus to run simulations. If you're just trying out BEM for the first time, EnergyPlus directly is a pretty tall order since it's text based and requires a lot of manual connections between objects.
The OpenStudio Application is more user friendly but still has a bit of a learning curve. Documentation can be found here. If you are working on single family residential you may even want to try something like BEopt initially. It is no longer supported, but it's free and does a good job for small residential models.
