Aquaveo & Water Resources Engineering News

Aquaveo 2023

By aquaveo on December 26, 2023

It's been a good year here at Aquaveo and a lot has happened that we're proud of, so we’d like to close out the year by reviewing some of our biggest highlights. We released new versions of our software, including new tools and features. We released SMS (Surface-water Modeling System) 13.3, WMS (Watershed Modeling System) 11.2, and GMS (Groundwater Modeling System) 10.8 beta.

Significant upgrades were made to the color ramp in the contour section of the display options. Many new pre-generated contour color and customization options were added to help you get your project looking just right. But for those of you who prefer to stick with what you know best, the old color ramp options remain available to you through the Legacy options button.

We're excited about what we've got going on in our toolboxes. The toolbox option has made it to WMS with version 11.2, and there are new tools in the toolboxes for GMS and SMS. SMS has tools for backing up meshes and restoring previous meshes., Both GMS and SMS have new tools for generating unstructured grids. This is just a sample of what has changed in the toolboxes. Take a look for yourself to see all the different tool options that have come with the newest versions of our software.

SMS 13.3 has new 3D structure modeling capabilities, which you can learn about on our wiki or use our new 3D Structures tutorials for a more hands-on learning experience. We've also added four new models in SMS 13.3's free community edition: ADCIRC, AdH, CMS-Flow, and STWAVE.

We partnered with Aquanty to bring the HydroGeoSphere model to GMS 10.8 beta. The HydroGeoSphere model can help you more accurately replicate the complex processes involved in the terrestrial part of the hydrological cycle.

WMS 11.2 now includes the WinTR-20 model in the TR-20 interface. WinTR-20 is an updated version of the TR-20 model used in both the WinTR-20 and TR-55 programs. You can learn about what this entails on our wiki, or by using our new tutorial on the WinTR-20 interface.

For Arc Hydro Groundwater (AHGW), we released a version that is compatible with ESRI's ArcGIS Pro. AHGW Pro contains significant updates to the arc hydro groundwater tools and makes use of ArcGIS Pro’s online platform.

We continue to develop our Tethys products, including CityWater. We were pleased to have released the Automated GSSHA Watershed Analysis (AGWA) , an online web application for managing watershed models.

We are also excited about our work with GEOGloWS and our other development partners. We are looking forward to our continued collaboration.

As excited as we are about what happened this past year, we’re even more excited about what 2024 will bring. We can tell you that there will be even more new tools in the Toolbox. We expect to release the full version of GMS 10.8 early in 2024. Also expect more new features for all of your favorite water modeling applications.

You've helped make this year a great one, and we hope you'll come along with us and do the same in 2024!

Blog tags:

XMS

Contours from Raster and Features from Raster

By aquaveo on December 19, 2023

Two new tools in the most recent version of theToolbox for Aquaveo’s GMS, SMS, and WMS (collectively known as XMS) are the Contours from Raster and the Features from Raster tools, which can be found in the “Coverages” folder of the toolbox. These tools can be a great way to use rasters to quickly generate coverages with contours or specific features such as streams and roadway embankments.

The Contours from Raster tool takes the elevation data from a raster and uses it to generate a contour coverage. This generates contours lines along the elevations at specified intervals. This can be useful for a number of things including, in some cases, a simple way to see where to define domains and boundaries for your project.

To generate this contour coverage using the Contours from Raster tool, you’ll need these components:

A surface raster file loaded into the project.
A contour interval you want for your project.
Base contour height appropriate for your project.
Smoothing filter size (in num. points), which should be an odd number.
Tolerance factor between 0 and 45 degrees. This determines the generalization level.

The Features from Raster tool generates features like streams and roadway embankments based on the elevation data from a raster. This tool can minimize the need to draw these features by hand. The inputs required for this tool are:

An input elevation raster loaded into the project.
The feature type which can be either stream or ridge.
The threshold area.
The pre-processing engine appropriate for your project:

rho8 – Computes flow directions and accumulations using the Rho8 algorithm.
Whitebox full workflow – Computes flow directions and accumulations using the Whitebox tool full workflow algorithm that uses a standard D8 method for computing flow directions.

Rasters often contain a large number of data points, so it may be beneficial to use the Smooth Raster tool or Feature Preserving Smoothing tool on the raster before using it to create contours or features. Alternatively, the Clean command can be useful for tidying up feature objects after the coverage has been generated.

Go to any of the XMS software to try out these new tools as a way to create coverages for your project today!

Blog tags:

XMS

Two Tools for Creating a Raster from a Dataset

By aquaveo on December 12, 2023

Do you have solution data that you want to export as raster data? The Surface-water Modeling System (SMS) provides two tools to help you create rasters from datasets. In this blogpost we will discuss the WSE/Depth Raster from Dataset tool and Raster from Dataset tool as well as the uses for both these tools and the differences between them.

Example of the WSE/Depth Raster from Dataset tool

WSE/Depth Raster from Dataset tool and Raster from Dataset tool are two separate tools in the SMS Toolbox. Each addresses the process of converting datasets to rasters, but with some differences.

To start, it should be noted that both tools are designed for creating raster data from solution datasets. This means that your project should contain solution data from a successful model run. Also, both tools allow you to define the pixel size of the resulting raster.

The WSE/Depth Raster from Dataset tool creates a raster based on water-surface elevation (WSE) or depth data. The tool requires that you have a geometry containing a WSE or elevation solution dataset in your project and that you have a raster containing the project elevation. It can extract both a WSE raster and a depth raster from a single tool execution. The tool is designed specifically to work with the bathymetry data. Other datasets may be converted incorrectly when using the WSE/Depth Raster from Dataset tool.

For other solution dataset on a geometry, the Raster from Dataset tool can create a raster from those datasets. This tool will work with datasets on various geometries including meshes, scatter sets, and unstructured grids (UGrids). The tool also allows you to use a raster template to define the output origin, activity, and possible resolution.

Now that you know some of the similarities and differences between the WSE/Depths Raster from Dataset tool and the Raster from Datasets tool, try out both of these tools and other features in the SMS Toolbox today!

Blog tags:

SMS

Announcing GMS 10.8 Beta!

By aquaveo on December 5, 2023

We are pleased to announce the release of GMS 10.8 in beta! There are many updates and additions that have been made in the newest version of GMS and this blog post will explore just a few of the new tools and functionalities.

HydroGeoSphere

HydroGeoSphere is a model brand new to GMS, which will be available to you in GMS 10.8 beta. The HydroGeoSphere model was developed by Aquanty to accurately replicate the intricate processes involved in the terrestrial part of the hydrological cycle using a three-dimensional control-volume finite element simulator.

3D UGrid from Rasters

The 3D UGrid from Rasters tool is new to the GMS toolbox. This tool is found under the Unstructured Grids folder in the toolbox, and can be used to generate a 3D UGrid using multiple rasters and a 2D UGrid. It creates layers between the rasters using the 2D UGrid and the horizons approach. When this tool is used, the resulting 3D UGrid has no vertical sub-discretization of the layers, and the horizontal discretization of all the layers is the same. More information about this tool can be found on this page of our wiki.

MODFLOW-USG Transport

MODFLOW USG Transport in GMS has new support for seepage elevation and concentration in the Recharge (RCH) package. The Evapotranspiration (EVT) package now supports ETFACTOR.

Color Ramp

The way the color ramp in the contour display options works has been updated, and many new color options have been added to GMS 10.8. The way the color ramp works has been changed to more closely resemble the changes that have already been made in SMS and WMS. If you want a more detailed explanation of how to use this version of the color ramp, you can check out this blog post. The blog post covers the color ramp for SMS, but the functionality is basically identical between SMS and GMS.

There are a lot of new things to try in GMS 10.8 beta, so download it from our website and check it out today!

Blog tags:

GMS