October 2007
Special edition from the:
Haestad Methods Solution Center
Celebrating the Industry’s #1 Water Modeling Solutions
Bentley's Haestad product line has been selected as the #1 water resources modeling software in a national survey. Join us in celebrating by enjoying great discounts and free water modeling books.
Bentley is proud to announce that its Haestad Methods product line has been selected as the #1 water resources modeling software in a national survey. Commissioned by Bentley, the survey was conducted across the readership of CE News’ Civil Connection, a leading civil engineering newsletter published by ZweigWhite.
The survey asked civil engineering professionals at leading consulting engineering firms, public works departments, water and sewer utilities, and municipalities around the country about their software preferences in seven categories of water resources modeling software. Bentley’s Haestad solutions earned the No. 1 position in the following five categories:
# 1 WATER DISTRIBUTION MODELING SOLUTIONS
58 percent prefer Bentley solutions:
WaterCAD and WaterGEMS
# 1 TRANSIENT ANALYSIS SOLUTION
55 percent prefer Bentley solutions:
HAMMER
#1 WASTEWATER CONVEYANCE MODELING SOLUTIONS
50% prefer Bentley solutions:
SewerCAD and SewerGEMS
#1 STORMWATER MODELING SOLUTIONS
51 percent prefer Bentley solutions:
StormCAD and CivilStorm
#1 GENERAL HYDRAULICS APPLICATIONS
82 percent prefer Bentley solutions:
FlowMaster and CulvertMaster
In the survey, Bentley’s WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, HAMMER, SewerCAD, and SewerGEMS received more than three times the top responses of their closest competitors, among responses from water utilities, municipalities and civil engineering firms in the water distribution, transient analysis, and wastewater conveyance categories.
Bentley’s StormCAD and CivilStorm topped the stormwater networks category, as did its CulvertMaster and FlowMaster in the general hydraulics category. Bentley’s PondPack came in second in the detention pond analysis category and its HEC-Pack came in third in the floodplain modeling category.
“It’s gratifying to once again have users confirm Bentley’s technology and market leadership as well as the value of Haestad Methods solutions in meeting their needs,” said Charley Ferrucci, vice president, Bentley water asset solutions. “Though this survey confirms our first-place position among civil engineers, utilities, and municipalities only in the United States, we are also establishing this same leadership globally. Haestad Methods solutions are broadly available around the world, including in some of the fastest-growing economies such as China and India.”
Ease of use: number one requirement for water resources modeling software
The survey respondents also said that ease of use is their foremost requirement for water resources modeling software, and that they found Bentley’s Haestad Methods products to be the easiest to use.
Said Ferrucci, “It comes as no surprise that ease of use is a top priority. Hydraulic modeling is complex by nature and can consume a great deal of an engineer’s time. Our investment in usability improves productivity in all three critical stages of the modeling process: model building and setup, calibration, and results analysis. This means our users can spend more time doing what they know best: engineering.”
Seventy-seven percent of water modelers require multiple interoperable platforms
Multiplatform interoperability across stand-alone, CAD, and GIS platforms was second in the survey respondents’ list of must-have characteristics. When asked about their use of CAD, GIS, and stand-alone platforms for water resources modeling, 77 percent said they normally use at least two of these platforms simultaneously.
In explaining the critical importance of multiplatform interoperability to water resources projects, Thomas Walski, senior product manager for Bentley water products, said, “All of these projects require collaboration among people from different disciplines with preferences for different work environments.
“With our level of multiplatform interoperability, models work together no matter what platform they were created in; people work collaboratively, each in his or her preferred environment; and organizations work more efficiently by leveraging the skills of their specialists and their investments in technology. Moreover, there are no translation errors to contend with.”
Walski continued, “On the other hand, organizations that choose a less interoperable platform are often forced to buy additional licenses of ArcGIS or AutoCAD just to run the model, to train modeling team members that are not familiar with the selected platform, and to deal with translation errors that increase costs and hamper project schedules.”
Celebrating #1
To celebrate Haestad Methods solutions being selected as the #1 water resources modeling software, Bentley is offering for a limited time, complimentary water resources modeling books and great discounts on the industry’s #1 water modeling software products. Click here to learn more about this special promotion.
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Sewer System Capacity Evaluation to Prevent Overflow
Missed BE Conference 2007? Watch Bentley’s Tom Walski present how modeling can provide essential information to identify capacity limitations and to help develop improvement plans.
Presented by: Tom Walski, senior product manager for Bentley water products
Watch presentation now! As featured at BE Conference2007, Los Angeles
Summary:
Sewer systems require regular assessment to ensure that they have the capacity to handle peak flows; an example is the California State Wastewater Discharge Requirements for Sanitary Sewers, which is the state's approach to CMOM. This presentation illustrates how modeling can provide essential information to identify capacity limitations and to help develop improvement plans.
More geospatial presentations from BE Conference 2007 and BE Conference London 2007.
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Sneak Preview: New HAMMER V8 XM
Coming up soon, the new version of the #1 transient analysis model in the industry shows off an all-new interface making water hammer analysis and design easier than ever.
Bentley’s HAMMER, the industry’s #1 transient analysis and water hammer modeling solution, will join the V8 XM generation of Haestad Methods products with the latest Bentley SELECT Update that provides HAMMER with a brand new interface that will make transient analysis easier than ever.
HAMMER uses the Method of Characteristics – the benchmark standard and unquestionably the most rigorous and robust algorithm for hydraulic transient flow analysis with over 20 years of proven real-world implementation. HAMMER’s all-new interface further simplifies the complex science of water hammer and transient analysis by implementing all the productivity and interoperability features that make Haestad Methods products the easiest to use in the industry.
A shared file types across HAMMER, WaterCAD, and WaterGEMS
The new HAMMER shares the same file type and data model as WaterCAD and WaterGEMS which means that HAMMER models can simply be opened with WaterCAD or WaterGEMS (or vice-versa) without an unnecessary conversion or import step. This key advancement represents the highest possible degree of integration allowing users to seamlessly share water distribution and transient analysis models. It’s important to clarify though that HAMMER V8 XM is a completely self-contained product, and does not require a separate license of WaterCAD or WaterGEMS in order to run.
ArcGIS, AutoCAD, MicroStation, and stand-alone interoperability included
As it is the case with WaterGEMS and SewerGEMS, the new HAMMER V8 XM includes, within a single product, four interoperable environments: ArcGIS, AutoCAD, MicroStation and stand-alone. HAMMER becomes the first transient analysis model with this unique level of interoperability allowing users to work inside their favorite GIS, CAD or stand-alone environment to build, edit, run, and analyze transient models.
HAMMER inherits ease of use and productivity features
The V8 XM edition of HAMMER leverages more than two decades of research efforts to develop the easiest to use products in the industry. Haestad Methods solutions users will recognize familiar features in the new HAMMER including scenario management, FlexTables, active topology, ModelBuilder, support for multiple background layers, Skelebrator, network navigator, contours, dynamic queries, selection sets, and named views, among others.
WaterCAD and WaterGEMS users: Save 50 percent on the new HAMMER!
For a limited time only, WaterCAD and WaterGEMS users will be able to purchase the new HAMMER V8 XM edition with a 50 percent discount. Don’t miss this great opportunity to add the new HAMMER to your hydraulic modeling toolbox!
Lessons Learned in Calibrating an IDSE Model
This paper describes the lessons learned in converting a master planning water distribution model for Scranton, Pennsylvania into a model that could be used for IDSE studies.
Abstract:
This paper describes the Initial Distribution System Evaluations (IDSE) study conducted for the Scranton water distribution system owned by Pennsylvania American Water Company (PAWC). The Stage 2 Disinfection By-Product Rule IDSE requirements have led utilities to redo their water distribution system models to conform to different standards than prior models which were created for master planning studies. This paper describes the hurdles faced in converting an older water distribution model for Scranton. into a model that could be used for IDSE studies. Some of the issues included:
- Need to fill in the distribution grid
- Ability to better assign water use records to nodes
- Problems with data sources being in different (and nonstandard) coordinate systems
- Issues with boundaries between pressure zones
- Discontinuities in underlying CAD map
- Questionable or missing SCADA data
- Complexity of the Scranton system
The problems encountered during the study and their solutions, which involved a mix of advanced data processing tricks to plain-old hard work, are described in this paper.
Download white paper. As presented at the World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2007. Tampa, Florida, May 2007.
Visit the WaterGEMS Resource Center to download more white papers.
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Bogota Uses SewerGEMS to Extend Coverage to Entire City
EAAB, the water and sewer utility of Colombia’s largest city is using SewerGEMS to extend wastewater and stormwater services coverage to the entire metropolitan area of Bogota.
Bentley is proud to announce that Empresa de Acueducto y Alcantarillado de Bogota (EAAB), the water and sewer utility of Colombia’s capital and largest city, has selected SewerGEMS, Bentley’s urban sewer modeling solution, to support the utility’s sewer master plan. The plan’s key goals include extending wastewater and stormwater services coverage to the entire metropolitan area of Bogota.
Commenting on the utility’s decision to use SewerGEMS, Eng. Orlando Guzmán, EAAB’s director of engineering services, said, “After experiencing the powerful and yet easy-to-use WaterGEMS in modeling our water distribution system for the past three years, selecting SewerGEMS to help us achieve our aggressive sewer service coverage goals was not a complicated decision. The responsiveness and professionalism of Bentley’s technical support team during these years was also a key factor in our decision.”
SewerGEMS is the only sewer modeling solution to include interoperability across four modeling environments: stand-alone, ArcGIS, AutoCAD, and MicroStation. This unique feature allows users to take advantage of their individual skills working in the environment with which they have experience while seamlessly sharing models and files regardless of the environment they prefer to use.
Mr. Guzmán continued, “The integration of our sewer models with our GIS is extremely important to us, and our GIS specialists are already leveraging SewerGEMS’ integration with ArcGIS to quickly build and load our models with data from our GIS. But not everyone on our team is a GIS specialist, and that’s why we value so much the flexibility of Bentley’s technology that allows hydraulic engineers, urban planners, and everyone else on our team to contribute using the straightforward stand-alone interface.”
SewerGEMS will also help EAAB engineers minimize sewer overflows in the Paseo Rio Salitre environmental corridor, Latin America’s longest. It comprises 54 kilometers of channels and 228 hectares of water detention ponds that interconnect very sensitive urban watersheds in the north of Bogota.
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Bentley, the “B” logo, BE, Bentley Institute, Haestad Methods, MicroStation, WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, HAMMER, SewerCAD, SewerGEMS, StormCAD, CivilStorm, PondPack, FlowMaster, CulvertMaster, and HEC-Pack are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly-owned subsidiaries. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.