We keep trying to make Groundwater Vistas better. Here are the new features added between version 6.17 and 6.20.
- Increased the maximum number of parameters for Pest from 300 to 600 (this does not include pilot points).
- 2 new file imports: MNW1 input files, and LAK2 input files.
- Surfer grid files can now be used to set boundary condition head (which we had before), Kv, bottom elevation, and bed thickness. This option is under BCs/Import/Surfer. When importing surfer files for boundary conditions, only those boundary conditions with the "computed boundary condition" flag set and of the current type will be modified.
- Conversion menu added to the File menu. In previous versions we had a conversion from shapefile to GoogleEarth kml file. We put that under this new Conversion menu and added two new options. One converts an ESRI ascii grid file to a Surfer grid file. ESRI ascii grids are easily created from digital elevation models (DEMs) in GIS. This new option was added for those users who do not own a license for Surfer. The second conversion intersects a shapefile with a surfer grid file. It is often easy to get shapefiles of hydrography but usually these shapefiles do not contain elevations. While it is possible to intersect the 2 types in GIS, it is sometimes not that simple. So this conversion was added to GV. It works on points, lines, and polygons. For lines you get elevations at the beginning and end of each line (or polyline). For polygons you get an average of all points that lie within the polygon. In addition, the output is a 3D shapefile with "z" values added to each point.
- Text file import of analytic wells and targets now support a "relational" file of transient data. The main file contains data about each point and the second file contains time (optional), date, and target value or pumping rate. The two files are linked via the name of the point.
- Cleanup on MODFLOW2000-GWM. We have supported this "new" optimization version of MODFLOW2000/2005 since version 6 came out but we have not had a lot of users trying it. One user has recently put it through a fairly rigorous test and we fixed some things in GV to deal with more complex problems, mainly related to transient pumping constraints.
- MODFLOW-NWT Version 1.0.5 (see previous blog post on this one).
The last free ESI webinar discussed the file conversions and relational text import mentioned above. If you want more details on these, you should view this webinar from May 2012. You can download the video from www.groundwatermodels.com - click clients/downloads - and scroll to the very bottom of the download page.
