albertodeluca
commented
7 years ago Paolo,
thank you for you feedback, and sorry for the lack of information. We have reviewed other plugins before starting the development and the focus of QEPANET was set on allowing the user to easily create and manage EPANET projects inside QGIS. For this purpose, the development has been led by two principles: 1) using the standard EPANET inp file as a mean to save all the project data (therefore making it possible to open and edit existing inp files) and 2) creating an easy to use set of tools to guide the creation of the network, to ensure the creation of a network correct from the EPANET point of view (exploiting the standard QGIS editing tools, like other plugins do, would not give such guarantee).
In QEPANET you fill find all the following features not available in other similar plugins:
- a set of dedicated editing tools (in a dockable toolbar) facilitating the management of the hydraulic network. These tools allow the creation, modification and deletion of the network elements, and enforce the topological correctness of the network. In addition, there are a set of nifty shortcuts to set the attributes of the network elements (e.g.: pipe diameter and pipe material);
- the option of using a raster DTM to easily extract the elevation of the network nodes;
- the ability to draw the network elements in the order you prefer: as it automatically adds junctions at the end of newly created pipes (to avoid wrong commands to the EPANET software), there is no need to draw all the junctions before drawing the links;
- support for 3D pipe lengths: it takes into account the elevation profile to automatically calculate the actual pipe length;
- easy setting of the maximum pipe length for construction purposes: you choose your pipe length from the manufacturer’s datasheet and QEPANET automatically inserts the vertices along the pipe at the appropriate distances;
- a graphical section editor to define and adjust the position of the pipe in relation to the ground. This is useful to set the excavation depth of the pipe;
- easy definition of the pipe properties such as material and roughness. It is for instance possible to choose the material and the plugin presents a range of realistic roughness values to choose from. The properties are managed by the plugin GUI, so that there are internal control on their consistency (there is support for IS and imperial units);
- a tool to edit the curves used to define pumps behaviour;
- a tool to edit the patterns used to define junctions behaviour;
- a series of tools to analyse the simulation results, that include thematic mapping of the network and graphs of the modelled entities along time;
QEPANET uses the standard EPANET inp file to store the network information. As a consequence there is no need for any other files to store geometries and attributes. QEPANET can write inp files (to be directly used in EPANET) and, from any standard inp file it can rebuild the whole network (and associated properties, including patterns and curves) inside QGIS. This design choice renders it rather difficult to merge the plugin with other similar ones (such as GHydraulics that uses Shapefiles to store the network elements).
Hope it helps.
Alberto
On 12 August 2017 at 10:46, Paolo Cavallini notifications@github.com wrote:
There are other plugins dealing with hydraulics in general, and epanet in particular. Could you please review them and check why yours is needed, what is its strength, and explore whether your work could be merged with others? Thanks.
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pcav
There are other plugins dealing with hydraulics in general, and epanet in particular. Could you please review them and check why yours is needed, what is its strength, and explore whether your work could be merged with others? Thanks.