I am contemplating using SSA to model a 20 sq. mile watershed. I am new to SSA. Before I comit this direction, I'd appreciate some feedback on the limitations of SSA.
1. Are the number of nodes, catchments, conveyance links, etc. really unlimited?
2. Can you really import ArcGIS data sets directly to SSA (without too many glitches)?
3. What is the effect on the program stability and run time if you really load the program with pipe ntworks, storages and surface flows (to the exrent I'm describing)?
4. What other quircks and limitations should I know?
I am currently running C3D 2012
Windows 7- 64 bit
930 GB
I test drove C3D2013 and SSA2013 for a small drainage study (75 acres). Please don't take my feedback as gospel, but I waslooking for a place to post my experience and found your discussion request. Overall I was disappointed with the product, starting with the stormwater features in C3D. There is little room for tweaking the catchments or flowpaths. Looking at my level of detail, I found it necessary to make numerous adjustments to catchments calculated by C3D, and it was actually easier to draw them by hand and convert to catchment. I assume this may be less an issue on your large watersheds. The flowpath feature seems to be of little use as there is no dynamic link to the seperate flow sections. I mean how simple would it be to input ground cover lines, soil group lines and watershed lines and come up with a dynamic hydrology model so that when I am neck deep in analysis and find I may have goofed something that I can go back to the root data and update everything else? Anyway, when I exported to SSA I found that much of my flowpath data was lost or replaced with defaults. There is no dynamic link back to the C3D model, so anytweaks are done manually again. When my model was up and running, I liked the interface and ease of making changes to pipe and structure data, but was surprised to find there is no design component to SSA by which I could have the software take a stab at pipe sizing. After I used the model to manually design replacement pipe runs, I could not find a way to export back to C3D as an actual pipe network - only linework. As you will see in other posts, there is a major problem with printing. I may have missed some things, and I really hope someone educates me, but thus far my opinion is that Autodesk rushed this SSA thing and I am once again beta testing their products for them at my own expense. My advice would be to look at other options. For these and other reasons, my office is beginning to consider Carlson Software.