Automated Elevation Assignment for Roadway Ineffective Flow Areas
The [Match High Chord] button in the Bridge & Culvert Data dialog box causes the defined Ineffective Flow Areas to be adjusted so that their elevations match the roadway crossing high chord geometry. This command greatly speeds up defining ineffective flow areas at bridge and culvert roadway crossings.

2D Floodplain Encroachments Command

Similar to the 1D Floodplain Encroachment command within GeoHECRAS, the 2D Floodplain Encroachment command automates the placement and analysis of floodplain encroachments along the river reach when performing a 2D steady or unsteady flow computation. This allows the modeler to have a better understanding of the true flow effects when attempting to determine the floodway in a complex flow situation. The modeler can examine the VxD (velocity x depth) factor, as this directly indicates greater flood hazard and hydraulic importance.

Multi-Select Layers in Map Data Layers Panel

More than one layer at a time can be selected within the Map Data Layers panel in order to apply an operation to the selected layers. For example, the user can select several layers at the same time by holding down the [Shift] key to multi-select and then right-click and choose Remove from the displayed context menu.

Toggle Base Map Display While Digitizing

The user can now turn ON and OFF the base map layer within the Map Data Layers panel while any digitizing command is active. This allows, for example, the user to toggle between the Google Map view and a terrain surface color relief view while digitizing the river centerline.

2D Flow Training Structures

The software allows the user to create flow training structures in the 2D flow area mesh for stream restoration modeling. River structural measures can be added to the 2D flow model to improve the flow of the river and maintain the channel within the floodway, preventing and reducing river channel migration during flood events. This allows critical infrastructure to be protected, like bridge roadway crossings, by directing river flow through the bridge opening during extreme flow events.

2D Bridge Pier Structures

The software allows the user to stamp bridge piers into the 2D mesh. The bridge piers can be interactively moved and rotated relative to the roadway crossing. Various bridge pier shapes can be defined:

• Circular pier
• Rectangular round nosed pier
• Rectangular sharp nosed pier
• Rectangular square nosed pier
• Square pier

Data Plot Entities Hotspots

All data dialog box plot windows (i.e., Cross Section Data, Bridge & Culvert Data, Inline Structure Data, Lateral Structure Data) now support persistent hotspots. The user can click on any point within the plot window, such as ineffective flow areas, comparison cross sections, culverts and more and the software will display the corresponding station and elevation. To remove the displayed hotspots from the plot window, right-click and select Clear All Hotspots from the displayed context menu or navigate to another cross section, roadway crossing, etc.

Profile Line Velocity Plot

The Velocity against Terrain plot has been added as an option to the Profile Line Plot.

Convert to Drawing Layer Command

The Convert to Drawing Layer command takes a shapefile layer and creates a duplicate drawing layer with the same name. The original shapefile layer remains unchanged.

Assign Manning’s Roughness from GeoTIFFs

The software now allows GeoTIFF files representing land use data to be used for assigning Manning’s roughness to 1D and 2D HEC-RAS models.

Draw 2D Mesh Face Command

The Draw 2D Mesh Face command allows the user to draw a mesh patch (or mesh template) and direct the software to honor the drawn patch when generating the mesh. The Draw 2D Mesh Face command is available in the 2D Flow Area Data dialog box tool palette. This command permits the user to draw 2D element faces as lines in the 2D Flow Area Preview window. These lines will only snap to the ends of other 2D element face lines and will not snap to any other entities. The user can draw element face lines and construct 3-sided and 4-sided mesh elements to make a mesh patch. The command gives the user the ability to control how the HEC-RAS 2D cells are created in areas where a high level of detail is required, such as when 2D cells need to be placed and aligned to satisfy culvert inlet and outlet locations.

Elevation Profile Command

The Elevation Profile command allows the user to view the horizontal elevation profile for one or multiple terrain surfaces along a selected polyline. If a polyline is already selected on the Map View, the elevation profile for that polyline will be displayed in the Elevation Profile panel. The user can then select a different polyline from the Map View and the Elevation Profile panel will update with the newly selected polyline elevation profile. The user can also grab the polyline on the Map View and move it around, and the Elevation Profile panel will dynamically update showing the new elevation profile. The user can select one or more elevation data sources, such as an existing and proposed terrain surface, as well as different computed water surface profiles. By default, this command will reference the defined terrain surface in the Scenario Manager.

Plot Terrain Surface within Data Dialog Boxes

The Cross Section Data, Bridge & Culvert Data, Inline Structure Data, and Lateral Structure Data dialog boxes allow the user to view the assigned terrain surface in the graphical plot. This is helpful when there are two different elevation data sources, such as LIDAR and CAD contours, and the user wants to see the difference in elevation between them. Within the previously mentioned data dialog boxes, the Plot terrain surface checkbox controls whether the assigned terrain surface is displayed. This check box is disabled (i.e., grayed out) if a terrain surface has not been assigned in the Scenario Manager.

Enhanced Cross Section Selection

Selecting multiple cross sections for performing bulk actions—like assigning flow lengths, Manning’s roughness and more—has been made easier. When selecting cross sections from the Map View using the [Pick] button, the user has two options:

• Manually selecting multiple cross sections
• Click on the river reach and all associated cross sections will be selected

This enhanced functionality is available for the following commands:

• Assign Channel Banks
• Assign Flow Lengths
• Assign Ineffective Flow Areas
• Assign Conveyance Obstructions
• Assign Levees
• Conflate Point Data
• Extract Cross Section Geometry
• Reverse Cross Section Geometry
• Delete Cross Section Geometry
• Export Cross Sections to CAD
• Assign Manning’s Data

Google View Commands

Because Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Street View are commonly used by engineers, the software now incorporates these functionalities in the View ribbon menu. This capability allows the user to quickly display these views directly from the software, eliminating the need to export the project to Google Earth and other software.

The View ribbon menu contains the following new commands:

• Google Earth command
  Display the user-selected location from the Map View in Google Earth
• Google Maps command
  Display the user-selected location from the Map View in Google Maps
• Street View command
  Pick a street location from the Map View and display Google Street View for that location

Global Copy Command

The Global Copy command allows the user to bulk copy HEC-RAS model elements, including river reaches, cross sections, roadway crossings, inline structures, lateral structures, storage areas and more from one scenario (plan) to another. This feature can be used to quickly add HEC-RAS model elements from an existing project and eliminates the need to export the HEC-RAS model to Army Corps HEC-RAS to perform this task.

Animated 1D Flood Map

The user can direct the software to generate an animated flood map when working on a 1D unsteady model. The user can select from various output results to be plotted:

• Water Surface Elevation
• Flood Depth
• Velocity
• Depth x Velocity
• Depth x Velocity²

In addition, the user can generate a flood map for a specific time step or for the maximum or minimum water surface elevation, flood depth, velocity, etc.

River Reach Centerline Stationing

The river reach polyline will display centerline stationing when zoomed in. This assists the user in placing cross sections. The centerline stationing can be turned on and off using the HEC-RAS Properties dialog box.

Horizontal Stationing Displayed on Map View Cross Sections

When selecting a horizontal station from the Map View using the Cross Section (and other) Data dialog boxes, hovering the cursor over a cross section vertex will display the corresponding horizontal station and ground elevation. This assists the user in identifying which cross section station to select.

In addition, when the user selects a horizontal station in the Cross Section Geometry table of the Cross Section Data dialog box, the horizontal station is highlighted in the cross section plot and on the Map View cross section.

Display Manning’s Value on Map View Cross Sections

The software now displays the Manning’s roughness value on the Map View cross sections. This allows the user to visually confirm if the correct Manning’s roughness values have been assigned to the cross sections with regard to the underlying base map and land use.

Cross Section Directional Arrows

The software can now display directional arrows on cross sections lines, roadway crossing lines, inline structure lines, 2D flow connection lines and other related element lines. This helps the user determine if the data is defined in the HEC-RAS convention of increasing stationing left to right, from the perspective of a downstream direction.

The user can turn this feature on and off from the HEC-RAS Properties dialog box. In addition, the user can specify the location where the directional arrows are to be drawn on the lines, as:

• Left Side
• Middle (default)
• Right Side

Layer Properties dialog boxes – Transformation Panel

Surveyors use the NOAA online software program OPUS to take measured GPS grid coordinates from a survey data collector and convert them into local ground coordinates that are corrected for the true shape of the Earth (which is not a perfect sphere). AutoCAD Civil3D provides support for the transformation scale factor in its Drawing Settings dialog box. We have implemented support for this transformation scale factor throughout the software, including CAD layers, TIN layers, HEC-RAS layers, KML layers, LiDAR layers, SketchUp layers and many other layers, allowing the software to support local ground coordinates.

In addition, this same transformation capability has been incorporated into the following grid processing commands:

• Merge DEMs
• Convert Elevations
• Adjust Elevations
• Generate Contours
• Interpolate Geometry
• Stamp Geometry
• Stamp Multiple
• 2D Bridge Piers
• 2D Conveyance Obstructions
• 2D Ineffective Flow Area
• 2D Flow Training Structures

Stamp Multiple Command

The Stamp Multiple command allows the user to perform bulk stamp geometry operations. Similar to the Stamp Geometry command, this command allows the user to define multiple stamp geometry operations to be applied at one time to the terrain surface.

This is helpful in situations where the user may need to edit the terrain surface multiple times—especially when working with large DEM files where stamping one feature causes the entire terrain surface to be recreated each time.

The command supports various options for defining the stamping operation, including:

• Terrain cut or fill
• End cap styles
• Interpolation path
• Starting and ending elevations
• Template or user-defined cross section

The user can specify the merge order of the stamp operations, which will determine the stamp order of the composite terrain surface. In addition, the user can edit and modify the defined stamp geometry entities so that an iterative, trial and error approach can be used in constructing the updated terrain surface.

Improved Cross Section Geometry Extraction

The Assign Cross Sections, Draw Cross Sections, Extract Cross Section Geometry and other related commands now allow two different elevation sources to be used. This allows the user to define a primary and a secondary elevation data source. The primary elevation source takes precedence where available; the secondary elevation source is used everywhere else. This eliminates the need to merge two elevation data sources and makes it easier to create and modify HEC-RAS cross sections.

For example, a project may include high-resolution bathymetry survey terrain surface for the river channel and lower resolution CAD drawing contours for the overbank area. The high-resolution bathymetry survey data could be defined as the primary elevation data source and the CAD contours as the secondary elevation data source. The software automatically determines which elevation data source to extract cross section elevation data from.

Project Tab Context Menu Improvements

The Project Tab context menu has two new commands:

• Open Folder Containing Project
• Open in HEC-RAS

The Open Folder Containing Project context menu command will open the project folder in File Explorer where the GeoHECRAS model is located.

The Open in HEC-RAS context menu command will launch HEC-RAS with the GeoHECRAS model loaded.

Cross Section Vertical Roughness

Vertical variation of Manning’s roughness is now supported in the Cross Section Data dialog box. This option allows the user to enter Manning’s roughness values that vary both horizontally as well as vertically. The user can vary the roughness value either by elevation or discharge rate. During the computations, HEC-RAS will interpolate Manning’s roughness whenever the computed water surface elevation is between the user-defined elevations. If the computed water surface elevation is below the lowest elevation defined, then the roughness values from that lowest elevation will be used. Similarly, if the computed water surface elevation is above the highest elevation defined, the roughness values from that highest elevation will be used. No extrapolation of roughness values is performed.

Automatic Ground Point Reduction

HEC-RAS limits the number of geometry points for cross sections, lateral structures, roadway crossing high chord and low chord geometry, and inline structures to a maximum of 500 points. In addition, ineffective flow areas, conveyance obstructions and levees can insert additional geometry points into a cross section.

To assist the user, we have added a checkbox option in the Options backstage page that will enforce the software to always reduce the number of geometry points to 490 points or less when the user creates these HEC-RAS entities. By default, this checkbox option is ON.

Software Download Licensing Portal

Software licensing has been significantly improved by providing a Software Download Licensing Portal that provides the following functions:

• Downloading the latest software release
• Integrated view of the software licenses that have been purchased and deployed
• Moving of workstation software licenses
• Downloading of Network License Server
• Reporting of software usage within an organization
• Allowing administrators to monitor and manage the use of concurrent licensed software products within their organization

The Software Download Licensing Portal lets administrators monitor the allocation and deallocation of floating network software licenses being used in their organization. It provides usage and utilization reports for management approval and decision making and provides recommendations for optimal number of licenses to maintain. This allows the administrator to easily track the status of software licenses and software usage trends. It provides an integrated view of the licenses that have been purchased and what has been deployed. Administrators can use this data to make better purchase decisions, based on license usage. This means organizations can reach higher efficiency and maximize software license usage while reducing instances of denials when users cannot check out a license. This provides administrators with capabilities that can lower software licensing expenses, identify licenses that are paid for but not in use and help the organization achieve efficient license usage ratios for concurrent floating licenses.