HECRAS to C3D Water Surface Elevations

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

I am trying to export water surface elevations from HEC RAS to AutoCAD. Essentially what I want to do is to automatically export water surface elevations from the results in HEC RAS to the labels on my cross sections in AutoCAD so that I don't have to manually label them one by one. 

Is there a way to do this? I have managed to import the sdf file with the cross sections and alignments from HEC RAS to AutoCAD but they do not give an option to display water surface elevations.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Will

[Anonymous]

Anyone?

[jmayo-EE]

There is no automatic way with the ootb C3D tools. The River tools in the ultimate suite may automate this process..?? 

This process in the next few steps will help automatically form the flood line in between section sample lines and coincide better with the contours. IT wil also trim the water surface in section view to the ground srf.

1. Take the 3d ws section lines from hec and lenthen them on each side by 100' or so. You need to extend these sections past the real floodline you are trying to create.

2. Make a surface with  the sections above, name it  WS

3. Make a tin vol srf with EG base and WS as comparison, extract the zero contour.

4. Take the zero contour and close it off to the edges of study or EG.

5. Apply closed pline above as an outer boundary to the WS srf.

6. Sample the WS srf in the sections.

7. Label as required.

If your DEP and bosses would except the sections directly from hec ras you can save quite a bit of time.

[Anonymous]

I ended up copying the water surface elevation table from HEC RAS into excel and then pasting them into AutoCAD as text which then allowed me to convert to annotative form. Then I dragged and dropped the water surface elevations one by one onto each cross section. 

It was a workaround that was somewhat quicker than typing it out one by one which was what everyone else in my workplace does. I will try importing the 3d ws section lines from HEC RAS and making a surface next time and see which is quicker. 

Thanks for the response jmayo!

Will

[jmayo-EE]

No problem. Here's another way.

Keep ras open with your summary table.

Create a point on each sample line at the ws elv.

Project the points to the sections with a label style specifically configured for the WS elev label.

If the ws is needed, draw a horizontal line from the new cross section label's insert point to one bank, extend to the other.

[jmayo-EE]

For the workflow above you could also create a horizontal line in the section label for the ws elv. Even if it does extend to the surface on each side it may make it eaiser to draft manually.

If you had many sections and prefer tabular input for the ws elv, create one point with the correct description and copy it to eaqch sample line. DWhen prompted to merge or over write point numbers check the box to do it automatically. Select one pooint, select similar to select them all, right click and select edit points. You can work with the ras table and the edit points panarama.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

In the App Store you can check out SmartDraft HEC-RAS Tools.  They have a free trial.

Steltman Software also has some HEC-RAS tools.

I have used both with success.

Conan Witzel

[jmayo-EE]

I haven't done this in a couple of years but I always liked the Steltman tools much more than the C3D tools for going back and forth between the two programs.

[Hidden_Brain]

The HEC-RAS standard table 1 after modifications (dropping all other columns except station ans WSE) can be imported as a text file in C3D to create a profile. Use this profile and a flat assembly to create a water surface corridor that shows the floodplain limits.

[Anonymous]

I've installed SmartDraft on my computer and it works great! Now its time to pitch to my boss to buy this software. Thanks for recommending this! Saved me a bunch of time.

THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR INPUT!

[pablob2C4BU]

I like this idea. Which assembly did you use and how did you choose the daylight for it?

[pablob2C4BU]

@Hidden_Brain  

[Anonymous]

I think the poster is using something like Generic "LinkSlopetoSurface"  The daylight would be whatever surface you are flooding.  Set the slope to zero.

Hope that helps.

[jmayo-EE]

thats the sub I use too. The method is great but it fails if the sections have horizontal delfections. 

[pablob2C4BU]

Thank you. I think the easiest and fastest for me is to make a profile with
the WSEL from C3d. Then create a feature line from the alignment (river cl)
and then grade out that feature line to EG at 0%. and use the automatic
surface creation.