Aquaveo & Water Resources Engineering News

Have you ever wanted to export the linear contours on a 3D UGrid as a shapefile? By exporting GMS contours as shapefiles, you can open contour shapes in other GIS applications or in other GMS projects. GMS provides functionality for exporting UGrid contours to shapefiles. This article gives some guidance for using this functionality.

In GMS, linear contours display on the top and the bottom of the 3D UGrid. This can result in contour shapefiles with undesired shapes that make contours unclear. Fortunately, GMS 10.7 can now display just one cell face (top or bottom) of single layers in a 3D UGrid. This enables exporting cleaner contour shapefiles from one face of a layer in a UGrid.

For example, GMS can display just the top of layer 1, or it can display just the bottom of layer 3. This can make for cleaner contour shapefiles because the files will have contours from only one face of the 3D UGrid. This is useful if you want the contours from a UGrid but only need the top- or bottommost contours.

Do the following to export contour lines from one face of a UGrid layer as shapefiles:

1. Have a 3D UGrid visible in the Graphics Window. Make sure that it has a dataset that can be visualized using contours.
2. Activate the desired dataset.
3. Set the contours to linear in the dataset Display Options.
4. Turn on Single layer in the UGrid Single Layer toolbar and select the desired layer. By default, the UGrid Single Layer toolbar is to the right of the XYZS Bar at the top of the GMS window.
5. Adjust the drop-down in the UGrid Single Layer toolbar to show the cell faces desired: top, bottom, or all. GMS displays the top faces by default. This also adjusts which contours display. Now you have a certain set of contours singled out. These will be made into contour shapefiles.
6. Right-click on the active UGrid and select Export.
7. In the Export UGrid dialog that appears, select "Arc Shapefile of Linear Contours (*.shp)" from the Save as type drop-down and save the contour shapefile with the desired name.

If you move the shapefiles, make sure to move them with all of their accompanying files. That includes the files ending in "*.dbf", "*.prj", and "*.shx".

There may be breaks in the displayed faces of the UGrid when only showing the top or bottom face of a layer. This is because some adjacent cells are joined only by vertical cell faces; the edges of the top or bottom of the cells don't touch. Thus, when the vertical cell faces are hidden, there is only empty space. This often affects the display of the contours and the contour shapefiles.

Try exporting your UGrid contours as shapefiles in GMS 10.7 today!

SMS has an expansive suite of display options that allows you to visualize your results with style and clarity. What’s more, SMS has tools that can streamline how you adjust display options. Have you ever wanted to be able to adjust display options in SMS without actually opening the Display Options dialog? Have you contoured a dataset to your liking and now want to save those particular contour settings to return to them quickly? Display themes make these things possible. Today we discuss the uses of display themes as well as considerations to keep in mind while using them.

Display themes have several uses. Imagine a project where you want to quickly navigate between two different parts of the project. Display themes can be used to save view options, so you can jump back and forth between opposite ends of the project by clicking on the display theme in the Project Explorer.

Display themes also allow you to develop a unique set of contours for each dataset. You can build a display theme that automatically comes on every time a certain dataset is activated. If you save only contours in that display theme, then you have essentially tailored specific contours to turn on when the dataset is active. This allows each dataset to have unique contours.

Finally, if you get a shot of the project that you want to return to easily, you can set up a display theme to save almost all the display options. Display themes can save everything from the angle of the Graphics Window to the visibility of different items. However, even a display theme that saves all possible options does not guarantee producing the same view every time.

For example, the active dataset selected in the Project Explorer will affect the visuals. Selecting a display theme does not adjust the active dataset even if selecting certain datasets activates certain display themes. Furthermore, the display themes will not display any data that has been deleted in the Project Explorer. Please be aware of the various settings and actions besides the specified display options that can affect your graphics.

Depending on how you set up your display themes, selecting one can cause an unexpected change in what appears when looking at another display theme. Therefore, the order in which you select display themes can change the view you end up with, depending on what you have saved in each display theme.

How can you optimize your use of Display Themes? You might start by keeping them organized in folders in the Project Explorer. You can also label them with names that help you remember what display options got saved in each display theme. For examples of how this might be done, refer to the tutorials relating to display themes.

Assigning one group of display options to save with each display theme can make display themes more useful and precise. Display themes with one group of settings saved allow you to make quick, specific changes to the display. In this way, display themes become like shortcuts for adjusting the display options. To make sure that the display theme is only saving the desired display options, uncheck all the checkboxes except the desired checkbox in the Display Theme Properties dialog.

Getting the right display options can help you communicate your results more effectively, and display themes can make your display options more agile. Check out display themes in SMS today!

Rarely,SMS project files don’t save correctly. Various errors can cause this: for example, running out of processing power when saving a large project. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to recover SMS files that don't save correctly. One possible way is using the temp files created during the saving process.

SMS creates temp files that hold the information from the SMS file while the original files get rewritten. When an SMS project saves under normal conditions, the temp files are quickly erased. In many projects, if watching in the File Explorer, you won't even see them appear. However, if the SMS file fails to save correctly, the SMS temp files and folders may remain. If they are still available, they can be used to recover the project.

To recover an SMS project from available temp files and folders, do the following:

1. Identify the temporary *.sms project file, the data folder, and the models folder. They are located in the same folder as the project file and its accompanying folders. Each of these temp files has a time stamp at the end of the file name. The timestamp corresponds to the time at which they were created, which is the minute the project began to save.
2. Move these files/folders (there should be three of them) away from the original project folder. Ensure that they all end up in the same folder. Moving the temp files ensures that SMS doesn’t get confused about which data it's supposed to load when you open the *.sms project folder. This is important because the temp files are going to become the new project files.
3. Rename all of the temp files and folders, so they follow the normal SMS naming conventions. When done, they should appear as follows:
   • "ProjectName.sms"
   • "ProjectName_data"
   • "ProjectName_models"

If the temp files don't get renamed according to the naming conventions, it's likely that SMS will have trouble reading the information. Renaming the temp files usually only requires that you erase the time stamp at the end of the file/folder name. Some projects will not have the temp model folder.

1. Open the new ProjectName.sms file in SMS to verify everything imports correctly and looks good. We strongly recommend a thorough review of the project prior to continuing to work with it.
2. Adjust the project to ensure stability. Cleaning up your project and removing unnecessary data can help reestablish stability for your project. This makes it less likely for the project to save incorrectly in the future.

Please remember that these files were created before the most recent save was complete. This means that they cannot have the information that was supposed to be saved in the save that failed.

Unfortunately, a project saving incorrectly does not guarantee that the temp files will still exist. As soon as you realize your project might have saved or might be saving incorrectly, go in search of the temp files. There is no guarantee as to how long they will be available, so copy them to a new directory as soon as possible if they are still available.

There are other ways to rebuild SMS projects. If you have a file that saved incorrectly, but you can't find the temp files, refer to the wiki for further instructions or contact Aquaveo technical support (support@aquaveo.com). With added confidence that you can recover project files, build a model in SMS today.

Exporting and importing data between ArcGIS Pro and GMS allows many users to improve the quality of their groundwater models. Today we explore moving data between these two applications, focusing mostly on shapefiles.

Exporting and importing shapefiles allows features that have already been digitized in one program to be transferred to another program. For instance, once data has been modeled in GMS, it can be converted to a shapefile and imported into ArcGIS Pro. Furthermore, feature objects that have already been drawn in ArcGIS Pro or GMS can be transferred to the other program and then used as feature objects for the work you’re doing there.

To start, consider exporting feature objects from GMS as a shapefile. You can draw arcs in a coverage and then use the right-click menu in the Project Explorer to export the information. There are three options for file type, so make sure to select "Shapefile (*.shp)" from the Save as type drop-down. Once you click Save in the Export Coverage dialog, another dialog opens that allows you to choose what kinds of shapefiles you want to save. There are arc, point, and polygon shapefiles. Once you've exported the shapefiles, they can be imported into ArcGIS Pro using that program’s Add Data function on the Map ribbon tab.

It's important to keep in mind that when GMS feature objects get exported to a shapefile, there are a couple of other file types that get exported with them. It's important to keep all of the files together because the shapefile is not complete without those other files. For example, one of the file types has projection information that lets other GIS programs, like ArcGIS Pro, know where the shapefile is located geographically. Without it, the shapefile is not attached to specific geographic coordinates, making it far less useful. You might consider putting all the files created in the shapefile together in a folder. This could help keep them together if you choose to relocate them after creating them.

GMS also allows for exporting of contour features and MODPATH particle tracking lines as shapefiles. However, these shapefiles do not appear when they are imported into ArcGIS Pro. Fortunately, there is a workaround for this issue. The shapefiles that GMS creates can be imported back into GMS after being exported. Then you can convert them to feature objects. Once they are converted to feature objects, you can use the same process described above to turn them into shapefiles that ArcGIS Pro can visualize.

GMS also has the ability to import shapefiles created or edited in ArcGIS Pro. Points, arcs, or polygons can be created in GMS, exported to ArcGIS Pro, edited in ArcGIS Pro, then saved and subsequently imported back into GMS. ArcGIS Pro also has exporting tools that can create shapefiles, CAD data, or other types of data for GMS to import.

There are other kinds of information that can be exported and imported between the two programs. Both programs have means for exporting and importing text files; 2D UGrids and other geometries in GMS can be exported as shapefiles; Rasters, scatter datasets, and other forms of data can also be transferred between GMS and ArcGIS Pro. In short, importing and exporting between these two programs has many possibilities.

Explore exporting and importing tools in GMS today!