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iRIC Software
Changing River Science

FaSTMECH Tutorial 1

Kootenai River Valley, Idaho, USA

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Contents
Introduction to the iRIC Graphical User Interface ........................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Exercise 1: Importing Data.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Import Topography ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Import Images ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Simple Data Editing.................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Import Data for Model Calibration and Verification .................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Import Measured Velocity Data ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9

Import Measured Water-Surface Elevations ......................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Exercise 2. Grids ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Creating a Numerical Grid ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Create the Curvilinear Grid: ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 11

Mapping Geographic Data To The Grid Attributes. ................................................................................................................................................................. 15

Mapping With TINs .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16

Mapping With The Template Method .................................................................................................................................................................................. 16

Edit Data To Improve Mapping ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21

Exercise 3. Defining Calculation Conditions and Post-processing ............................................................................................................................................... 26

Defining Calculation Conditions ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 26

2D Post-processing .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 29

Displaying Scalar Results ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29

Displaying 2D Vector Results.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 30

Compare Measure Velocity Vectors to Solution Vectors .................................................................................................................................................... 30

Introduction to the iRIC Graphical User Interface

Launch iRIC 2.0 by selecting iRIC 2.0 from the Program Menu list or click on the iRIC icon ( ) on the desktop.
The iRIC Start Page (Figure. 1A) opens and displays several options to start a project under the Start Simulation
Project tab:
Create New Project—Allows you to select the solver you wish to use from a list of solvers currently
available in the application or to select the solver from a list of recently used solvers.
Open Project File—Allows you to open an existing project using a browser window or to select from a list
of recent projects.
The Support tab on the right provides links to the Home Page, Terms of Use, and Contact Information on the iRIC
website.

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 Select the Create New Project button which opens the Select Solver dialog window (Figure. 1B). Highlight
FaSTMECH and click the OK button.

A B

Figure 1. Shows the iRIC Start Page (A) and the Select Solver Dialog (B)

iRIC Application Window Menu Bar Main Toolbar

Operation Toolbar
Pre-processing Window
Object Browser

Canvas or Graphic View

Figure 2. Example of the main iRIC interface

The iRIC interface is operated using a variety of menus, toolbars, windows, and mouse operations.
The Menu Bar at the top of the window provides access to the primary functions necessary to build a flow model
including File Management, Data Import, Geographic Data, Grid, Calculation Conditions, Solutions, Calculation
Results, View, Options, and Help. Addition items are added to the Menu Bar depending on whether a Pre-processing
or Post-Processing Window is active.

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The Main Toolbar provides standard buttons to handle many of the same features such as opening and closing files,
controlling the display screen, and opening other windows and graphs which will be explained in the section on
Post-Processing. Some features are not enabled until a flow calculation is performed. See the table below for an
overview of the features that are always enabled:
Main Toolbar Buttons:
Opens an existing project
Saves the project
Saves a snapshot
Zooms to the full extent of the data
Shifts the active canvas display left
Shifts the active canvas display right
Shifts the active canvas display up
Shifts the active canvas display down
Zooms in
Zooms out

The Pre-processing Window opens by default when iRIC is launched, or by selecting the pre-processing icon ( ).
The Pre-processing Window is used for features and functions related to importing data, editing data, generating
computational grids, and editing computational grids. The Pre-processing Window has two parts, an Object Browser
on the left and a display screen or canvas on the right. The Object Browser in the Pre-Processing Window allows
you to control the display of geographic information such as elevation or topographic data as well as other datasets
that may be necessary for your application. The Pre-processing Window also displays the computational grid, and
background images. The canvas displays the data selected in the Object Browser.
The Operation Toolbar provides a unique set of tools that are specific to the different branches of the Object
Browser Tree. The suite of tools available in the Operation Toolbar are loaded and become active depending on the
branch of the Object Browser that is currently selected.
Mouse options allow you to pan (ctrl + left mouse button), zoom in and out (ctrl + mouse wheel), and rotate (ctrl +
right mouse button) the canvas display.
iRIC provides a suite of tools for visualizing and post-processing 2D model results. Map visualizations of model
calculated flow characteristics are viewed in a 2D Post-processing Window ( ). Graphs of calculated flow
characteristics along different grid dimensions or through time can also be generated using the Graph Window tools
( , , ). The Post-processing Windows and tools only become available when a simulation has been completed.
You will become familiar with the basic operation and workflow in the following three exercises. The exercises
focus on:
 Exercise 1: The mechanics of Importing, Editing and Viewing measured data that will be used to initialize
the model grid/mesh and can be used for model verification.
 Exercise 2: Building Grids and mapping/interpolating your measured data onto the grid.
 Exercise 3: Creating a simulation and editing the solver calculation conditions (parameters), running the
model, and visualizing the results.
Following the exercises are a set of Tutorials that will lead you through practical applications of the FaSTMECH
solver.

Exercise 1: Importing Data

This exercise provides familiarity with the mechanics of importing data that can be used to initialize the grid or for
model calibration and verification. You will also learn how to visualize the data and edit the data if necessary. All
the data and image files are in the iRIC Tutorials\FaSTMECH\Tutorial 1 directory.

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Import Topography

 The topography file is the most important piece of information required to build a numerical model of the
river reach of interest. The topography can be imported by selecting Menu Bar ->Import -> Geographic
Data -> Elevation.
 In the Select File to Import dialog, navigate to the following folder: iRIC Tutorials\FaSTMECH\Tutorial
1\Exercise 1. iRIC can import several different file formats; for this tutorial select “.tpo” in the Files of
Type drop down menu and select the following file: r5finpt2m114_shifted.tpo. This will open a dialog that
allows you to filter or reduce the number of points imported into iRIC. This can be useful if your data set is
extremely large, but for our purposes leave the default setting at 1 and select enter to import the entire
dataset.
 The Pre-processing Window now displays the topography data on the canvas and the data you imported
appears in the Object Browser under Geographic Data | Elevation | Points1 (Figure 1). In the Object
Browser the topography can be made visible or not visible by checking or unchecking the box next to
Elevation.
 To adjust how the elevation points are displayed, select in the Object Browser Geographic Data |
Elevation | Points1 and then right click to access a dialog that allows you to edit the data name in the
Object Browser, Export the data, Delete the data, and adjust Properties. Select Property and change the
point size to 1 (Figure 2).
 Add a data legend for the elevation data by selecting in the Object Browser Geographic Data | Elevation
and then right-clicking and in the resulting pop-up menu selecting Set up Scalarbar. Make sure Elevation is
displayed in the drop down menu and check the “Visible” box. Select the “Edit…” button for additional
features that control the legend display. Or simply left click on the legend and drag to a new location.
To change the range and intervals displayed in the data legend select Menu Bar ->Geographic Data -
>Color setting ->Elevation. This opens a dialog that allows you to change the minimum and maximum
elevation colors. (Figure 3). Uncheck “Automatic” and change the maximum to 840 to see more detail in
the channel.
 Explore the Pre-Processing window controls using the buttons on the Main Toolbar to zoom in and out
and pan (See the Introduction for an overview). Also try the mouse options that allow you to pan (ctrl + left
mouse button), zoom in and out (ctrl + mouse wheel), and rotate (ctrl + right mouse button) the canvas
display. Select to center the data in the Pre-processing window and, if you rotated the view select to
restore the original orientation.
 iRIC automatically generates a triangular irregular network or TIN of the elevation data set. In the Object
Browser right click on Elevation | Points1 and in the resulting pop-up menu select “Property...” to open the
Display Setting dialog that allows you to view the elevation data set as points, wireframe, or a surface
(Figure 2). Experiment with viewing the data as wireframe and as a surface.
 Save by selecting File ->Save as File (*.ipro) from the Menu Bar.

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 Figure 1. Pre-processing Window display of the elevation data.

Figure 2. Display properties options for Elevation

Data
Figure 3. Display properties options for Elevation

Color Setting

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 Import Images

 Import images to placed in the background of the data. Background images can be imported from the
Menu Bar by selecting Import -> Background Image. In the resulting Open Image file dialog select the file
r5img9.jpg and then select Open. An error message may appear. Ignore this and click ok to show the image
in the Pre-Processing window, your screen should look like Figure 4.
 Open a second image file through the Object Browser by right-clicking on Background Image and
selecting Import Images in the resulting pop-up menu. Select the file r5img10.jpg. As with importing
Geographic Data there are multiple ways to access the import functions by using the Menu Bar or by using
the Object Browser.
 Ideally any image you import will have a corresponding world file that positions the image correctly in
space. If this is not the case you can adjust the image manually by rotating and scaling the image. See the
User’s Guide for more information.
 Save the file

Figure 4. Surveyed cross-sections and background image.

Simple Data Editing

 We would like to focus on the region of the data set encompassed by the two imported images. iRIC 2.0
provides some simple tools for editing the data which we will introduce here. To delete the data outside of
the two images select in the Object Browser Geographic Data | Elevation | Points1. You will see a
number of tool icons loaded into the Operation Toolbar as in Figure 5 below.

 To select a rectangle of points, make sure the icon is selected (selected by default) and left-click the
mouse and drag a rectangle while holding the mouse down, releasing the mouse to finish. When points are

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 selected right-click anywhere on the screen to bring up a pop-up menu of actions to apply to the selected
points (Figure 6). The selected points can be deleted, deleted above, or deleted below a user specified
threshold. In this case we want to delete the points outside of the two imported images to end up with
points and images as displayed in Figure 7. Thus, you’ll need to draw a rectangle with your mouse to
encompass the points outside the images. This will take several selections. Remember to use undo if you
make a mistake while editing your data points.
 More information on the data editing tools can be found in the User’s Guide.

Figure 5. Data editing tools available for point Figure 6. Pop-up menu for actions applied to

data sets. selected points

Figure 7. Image and elevation points following data point editing.

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 Import Data for Model Calibration and Verification

Import Measured Velocity Data

 Import data that can be used to calibrate or verify model predictions. Import measured velocity data from
the Menu Bar select Import ->measured values. Select EM_mar7a_adcp shift.csv.
 Adjust the length of the imported vectors in the Object Browser by right-clicking on Measured Values |
C:\(path to file) | Arrow and selecting Property in the resulting pop-up menu. In the Arrow Setting dialog
set the values to those in Figure 8 below.

Figure 8. Arrow setting to set measure vector properties

Import Measured Water-Surface Elevations

 Import measured water-surface elevation data from the Menu Bar select Import ->Measured values.
Select 3_10_08_wse.csv.
 Adjust the size of the points used to represent the water-surface elevations by right-clicking in the Object
Browser Measured Values | C:\(path to file) | Scalar and selecting Property in the resulting pop-up menu.
In the Scalar Setting dialog set the Point Size property to 5.
 The resulting view with images in the background and measured water-surface elevations and flow
velocities are shown in Figure 9.
 Save the project

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Figure 9. Measured velocity vectors and water-surface elevations scalar values shown on top of geo-

referenced images.

Exercise 2. Grids
This exercise provides familiarity with the process of creating a curvilinear-orthogonal grid used by the FaSTMECH
solver in iRIC. This exercise assumes Exercise 1 has been completed and you have some basic skills importing data
and working with the Object Browser to view data.

 First create a new FaSTMECH project and import the KootMeanderShift_filtered3.tpo topography file in
the Tutorial 1\.Exercise 2 folder. This is a large file of 2.1 million points. If you have a computer with 4GB
or less memory or you have an integrated graphics board rather than a separate graphics board, you may
want to filter the data. A good choice for filtering the data is 10, or importing every 10 th point in the data
set.
 Import the Meander2.jpg file (Figure 1).
 Take a look at the data to familiarize yourself with the reach. The Kootenai River is located in Northern
Idaho, USA. The flow direction is from bottom to top. The mean width of the river is approximately 200
meters. However there is an island towards the top of the reach and the width of the two channels plus the
island increases to approximately 800 meters.

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Figure 1. Kootenai River topography and image.

Creating a Numerical Grid

iRIC contains a number of different methods to generate grids for the many different iRIC solvers. The FaSTMECH
solver uses a structured curvilinear orthogonal grid. This type of grid can be created in three basic steps: define the
grid centerline, specify the width and density of points in the grid, and refine the curvature and location of the grid
until a satisfactory result is achieved. The result of the process will be a channel-following grid that looks something
like that in Figure 2.

Create the Curvilinear Grid:

 In the Menu Bar select Grid ->Select grid creating algorithm. In the Select Grid Creating Algorithm dialog
(figure 3), select “Create grid from polygonal line and width.” Note that a brief description or instructions
for creating the grid are given in the Description pane. Click OK. Another dialog will open providing
further instructions on using this function. Click OK.
 To draw the centerline, click the left mouse button in the desired locations starting at the upstream most
point of interest and ending at the downstream. Figure 4 shows the start of this process. Note that the
centerline is always drawn from upstream to downstream, and Upstream and Downstream labels are affixed
to those points as they are drawn. In this case flow is from lower right to upper left. At any point in the
process of drawing the centerline you can use the Pan (Ctrl+Left Mouse) and Zoom (Cntrl+Middle Mouse)
functions without affecting the placement of the grid center-line. In other words, using the Ctrl key to affect
a Pan or Zoom will interrupt the center-line process but not break it. When finished press “Enter” on the
keyboard.
 The Grid Creation dialog allows you to specify the number of nodes in the stream-wise direction, nI, the
number of nodes in the cross-stream direction, nJ, and the width of the grid, W (Figure 5). Set the grid
width to 800 meters and define the number of points in the streamwise and cross-stream dimension to give
corresponding increments of about 20 meters (displayed by dI and dJ)). Use the Apply button on the dialog

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 to dynamically view of the result of your grid parameters incrementally to find the desired spacing of nodes
in the stream-wise and stream-normal directions. Select OK when you are done.
 In this case it is likely that you will get the following warning, “Grid shape is invalid. Modify grid
creating condition, and try again. Select OK to dismiss the warning. This occurs when the
streamline curvature of the grid centerline is high relative to the width of the grid and results in the
grid overlapping on itself as in Figure 6.
 A Confirmation message “Do you want to map geographic data to grid attributes now?” follows. In this
case we will decline by selecting No. We want to modify the location and curvature of the grid which is
likely in this case to take many iterations. To disable the automatic mapping of geographic information
from the Menu Bar select Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Setting and in the resulting Grid Attribute
Mapping Setting dialog, select Manual for the Execute Mapping property.
 To adjust the centerline to better fit the grid to the data or as in the case here, adjust the curvature of the
grid to remove overlapping nodes. In the Object Browser select Grid () | Grid Creating Condition. This is
necessary to edit the grid. The center-line and points defining the center-line should be visible. When the
mouse is placed over the center-line or over a center-line point, the mouse cursor changes to a closed hand,
and if the left mouse is clicked and dragged, it will move the center-line or center-line point. Experiment
with adjusting center-line points to remove the overlapping grid nodes. If you make a mistake Ctrl+z will
undo and Ctrl+y will redo the previous action. Continue adjusting the center-line until there is no overlap of
the grid. Additional utilities to add or remove points are also available and will be discussed in Tutorial 1.
 Save the project.

Figure 2. A user-defined grid following the channel of the Kootenai River.

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Figure 3. Select Grid Creating Algorithm dialog.

Figure 4. Process to draw the grid centerline. Note the Upstream and Downstream labels are defined.

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Figure 5. The Grid Creation dialog

Figure 6. Curvilinear grid with grid overlap.

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Figure 7. Grid after editing the location of centerline points to refine the curvature and eliminate

overlapping grid nodes as shown in Figure 6.

Mapping Geographic Data To The Grid Attributes.

In the Object Browser, every branch in the Geographic Data tree has a corresponding branch in the Grid | Node
attributes. Imported data into each branch of the Geographic Data, such as Elevation in this case, is interpolated to
the grid by one of several methods described below. The FaSTMECH solver has several branches under the
Geographic Data however, only Elevation is required. The possible use of the other branches is discussed
throughout the Tutorials. Once you are satisfied with your computational grid, you can map or interpolate measured
elevations to each node of the grid. There are two algorithms to do this. See the User’s guide for a more detailed
explanation of each.

1. The first uses a triangular-irregular network (TIN), a surface defined by a set of contiguous, non-
overlapping triangles, generated by a Delaunay Triangulation of the imported data. The value at each node
of the grid is determined by finding the triangle that contains the grid node and linearly interpolating the
value based on the values of the three vertices of the triangle.
2. The second is based on a nearest neighbor approach that utilizes a template with a user-defined width and
length, where the length follows the local curvature of the grid. Interpolated values are assigned the inverse
distance weighted average of all measured points in the bin.

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Figure 8. Elevation mapped to the grid using the TIN Algorithm.

Mapping With TINs

 In a previous step above we set the Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Settings to Manual. A setting of Auto
would result in the application mapping the geographic data after every edit to the grid. The Manual setting
now allows us to choose when to map the geographic data. Do that now by selecting from the Menu Bar
Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Execute. Select OK when notified that mapping is complete. Node attributes
will be added to the Object Browser in Grid | Node attributes. Expand the Node attributes and make sure
that Elevation is selected so you can view the results (Figure 8).
 Save the Project.

Mapping With The Template Method

To illustrate the template method we’ll open a new FaSTMECH project with elevation data that was dominantly
collected as cross-sections. In this section you will also learn how to import a non geo-referenced image and stretch,
rotate and translate the image so that it fits the measured topographic data

 From the Menu Bar select File ->New Project. Select the FaSTMECH solver.
 In the Object Browser left-click then right-click on the Geographic Data | Elevation and in the resulting
pop-up menu select Import and open the ketchupisl.tpo file.
 From the Object Browser right-click Background Images and select Add Image in the resulting pop-up
menu and open ketchup2.jpg (Figure 9).

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  To adjust the location of the image select Background Images | Ketchup2.jpg. In iRIC whenever you want
to edit data whether it’s Geographic Data, Grid Creating, or Images, the object that is selected in the Object
Browser is enabled for editing.
 When Background Images | Ketchup2.jpg is selected, the left mouse button will pan the image, the middle
mouse button scales the image, and the left mouse button rotates the image. Experiment with these tools to
fit the image to the data (Figure 10).
 From the Object Browser right-click Grid | Grid Creating Condition and in the resulting pop-up menu
Select Algorithm for Creating Grid, and then select “Create grid from polygonal line and width”. Flow
direction is from bottom to top. Draw a center line and create a grid with a width of 450 meters and
discretization along the center line of 10 meters (Figure 11).
 From the Menu Bar select Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Setting. In the Grid Attribute Mapping Setting
dialog select the “Template mapping” option and then select the “Detail…” button. Set up the following
dialog similar to Figure 12 and click ok.
 From the Menu Bar select Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Execute. View the results and experiment with
different template dimensions to see the differences in the mapped topography (Figure 13). Save your best
effort to compare with TIN mapping below. Click on in the Main Toolbar to save an image.
 Compare the template mapping to the TIN mapping. Go back to the Menu Bar and select Grid ->Attributes
Mapping ->Setting, and set the mapping algorithm to TIN. Execute the Tin Mapping by selecting from the
Menu Bar Grid ->Attributes Mapping ->Execute. Click on in the Main Toolbar to save an image and
compare with the image taken of the Template Mapping above (See Figure 13 and 14).
 Save the file.

Figure 9. A non-geo-referenced image imported into iRIC.

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Figure 10. The background image fit to the data.

Figure 11. Location of the grid.

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Figure 12. Template mapping dialog

Figure 13. Elevation mapped to the grid with the template algorithm.

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Figure 14. Elevation mapped to the grid with the TIN algorithm

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Edit Data to Improve Mapping

Topography collected in the field may not fully resolve the channel. iRIC provides a set of tools that can be used to
improve the mapping. When any point data set is selected in the Object Browser under Geographic Data, the
Operation Toolbar (Figure 5)` shows a suite of tool that can be used to add points using a simple point adding tool
, interpolating between known points , or setting breaklines to the TIN. In this part of the exercise we will
briefly introduce these tools and provide an example that shows how they may be used to improve the mapping of
Geographic Data to the Grid | Node Attributes.
 Now that you’re an expert, start a new FaSTMECH project:
o Import the elevation data set CotLower.tpo.
o Import the geo-referenced image file output_mosaic.jpg.
o Create a grid with a width of 200 meters, and an approximately 5 X 5 meter cell dimension along
the centerline (flow is from left to right).
o Map the Grid using the TIN with a result that should look similar to that shown in Figure 15.
 Figure 16 shows a zoomed-in image of the downstream, river-right section of the grid, shown as a red box
in Figure 15. Because of the way the TIN algorithm creates triangles, cusps can be formed along the banks
of the channel as shown by the zig-zag line in Figure 16.
 To provide some insight into how these cusps are formed in the Object Browser turn off Grid | Node
Attributes | Elevation. Also in the Object Browser right click on Geographic Data | Elevation | Points1
and in the resulting pop-up menu select Property and then in the Display Setting dialog select Wireframe as
the Display Method (Figure 17). It is clear that the cusping originates from the elevation values mapped
onto the grid from the TIN which has triangles with vertices located on the bank and channel essentially
pulling high bank topography into the channel.
 We will use two techniques to improve the TIN and thus the mapping of elevation to the computational
grid.
o Breaklines: A breakline is drawn between two or more points. When the TIN is re-meshed edges
of the triangle are enforced to conform to the breaklines. Also the value along the breakline is a
linear interpolation of the bounding points. We will be editing Geographic Data | Elevation |
Points1 so make sure that is selected in the Object Browser. We want to separate the channel
from the bank so we will create a breakline along the base of the bank following the points with
lower topography or in this case cooler colors (blue as opposed to green or yellow).
 Select the breakline tool in the Operation toolbar ( ) and draw a break line between the
four points shown in Figure 18. Note that as you move the mouse the point to be selected
is highlighted. Make sure to select points at the bottom of the bank.
 Re-mesh the TIN to reflect the breakline by right-clicking anywhere in the Graphic View
and in the resulting pop-up menu selecting Remesh TINs. Note that the edges of the
triangles in the TIN now conform to the breakline.
 Remap the Geographic Data to the Grid by selecting from the Menu Bar Grid |
Attributes Mapping | Execute. The result of the mapping is shown in Figure 19.
o Interpolation: The interpolation tool ( ) can be used in one of two ways. First, to interpolate
linearly between known points at a specified interval and second, to interpolate between known
points by a user defined path. In both cases, select known points with a left mouse click and define
a path between existing points by holding the Ctrl key while left clicking to define the path
between points.
 In the Object Browser select Geographic Data | Elevation | Points1. This enables the
data editing toolbar (See Exercise 1 – Figure 5).

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  Select the interpolation tool . Select the same points as selected above for the breakline
and select Enter when Finished. In the resulting dialog enter 3 for the “Set Interpolation
Increment”.
 Right-click anywhere in the Graphics View and in the resulting pop-up menu select
“Remesh TINs”. Right-click on Geographic Data | Points 1 in the Object Browser and
select Property. Change the Display method to Wireframe and view the results (Figure
20).
 From the Menu Bar select Grid->Attribute Mapping -> Execute. View the result in
Figure 21 and compare with Figure 19.
 Save the project.

Figure 15. Location (red box) of reach that displays cusping along the bank.

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Figure 16. Cusps along the bank from the TIN algorithm

Figure 17. The TIN and location of cusps.

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Figure 18. Location of breakline (black line).

Figure 19. Result of mapping elevation with the TIN and breakline. Note cusping is gone. Compare to

Figure 16.

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Figure 20. TIN after creating an interpolation line along the bottom of the bank and Re-meshing the TIN

Figure 21. The topography mapped to the grid following the addition of an interpolation breakline.

Compare with Figure 19.

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 Exercise 3. Defining Calculation Conditions and Post-processing
The last exercise illustrates the process of creating a simulation and provides an introduction to post-processing
the results. You will set the calculation conditions for the simulation, run the simulation, and view the results in
a variety of ways. We will look at a reach of the Colorado River in Grand Canyon National Park. The
simulation includes a large lateral recirculation zone on river left. Flow is from upper-right to lower-left. Note
that there are measured water-surface elevations and velocities in the project and a grid has already been created
for you.

Figure 1. Domain for Exercise 3 including the measured velocity and gridded elevation.

Defining Calculation Conditions

 Open an existing project from Menu Bar by selecting File ->Open and select the Ex3.ipro project file in the
Tutorial 1\Exercise 3 folder (Figure 1).
 To define the calculation conditions select Menu Bar select Calculation Conditions ->Setting. Enter the
parameters as shown in Figure 2. Select Save and Close when you are done.

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A B

C
D

E F

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 G H

I J

K L

Figure 2. A. Discharge, B) Stage, C) Roughness, D) Lateral Eddy Viscosity, E) Grid Extension, F) Initial

Condition, G) Wetting and Drying, H) Solution Parameters, I) Solution Relaxation Coefficients, J) 2D

Solution Output, K) Quasi 3D Solution, L) 3D Solution Output..

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  To run the simulation from the Menu Bar select Simulation ->Run or click on the button. The warning
dialog will open to ask whether you wish to save the current project. Select OK. After the project saves a
Solver Console will open. This Console shows information about the simulation as the calculation is
running. A dialog opens to notify you when the calculation is complete. Click OK to close the dialog.

2D Post-processing

Calculation results can be viewed by opening a new 2D Post-processing Window by selecting Calculation Results -
> Open new 2D Post-processing Window from the Menu Bar or by selecting the button on the Main Toolbar. The
Post-processing window is organized in a similar way as the Pre-processing Window with an Object Browser and
canvas. The Object Browser in a Post-Processing Window allows you to control the display of calculated flow
characteristics such as depth, water-surface elevation, and velocity as well as to display arrows (vectors).

Displaying Scalar Results

Scalar results show the magnitude of various flow characteristic through contour plots.
 To begin with in the Object Browser turn off Measured Values.
 In the Object Browser select the check box next to Depth.
 Notice that the entire grid is contoured. To mask the contour to the nodes of the grid that are wet,
from the Object Browser right-click on FaSTMECH Grids | iRICZone | Scalar and in the pop-up
menu Select Property, and in the resulting Scalar Setting dialog (Figure 3A) select the Region
Setting button.
 In the Region Setting dialog (Figure 3B) select the Active Region radio button and then select OK.
 In the Scalar Setting Dialog set the Display Setting Attribute to Contour Figure and take note of
other attributes that can be set from this dialog including the min, max, and number of intervals for
the contour. Select OK when finished.
 In the Object Browser turn the Background Images on. The result should look like Figure 4.
 Change the display of the legend or scalebar by selecting the Color Bar Setting button in the Scalar setting
dialog (Figure 3C).

A B C

Figure 3. A) Scalar Setting dialog and associated B) Region Setting, and C) Color Legend Setting

dialogs.

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Figure 4. Scalar solution of Depth.

Displaying 2D Vector Results

 In the Object Browser turn on Arrow | Velocity. At first the vectors will be hard to discern so we’ll adjust
their size, then adjust their plotting increment to make them easier to see.
 Access the Arrow properties by right-clicking on Arrow in the Object Browser and selecting
Property in the resulting pop-up menu.
 In the resulting Arrow Setting Dialog (Figure 5A) in the Length attribute deselect the Auto
property and set the Length on screen property to 25 pixels. In the Sampling attribute select the
Sampling rate radio button and set the Sampling rate property to 2 in both the I- and J- direction.
The result is shown in Figure 5B.
 Alternatively set the Arrow Setting attributes as in Figure 5C with a result shown in Figure 5D.

Compare Measure Velocity Vectors to Solution Vectors

 In the previous step you set the Arrow Setting attributes as in Figure 5D. To compare the measured velocity
vectors with the solution vectors we want to scale the measure vectors the same as the solution vectors. In
the Object Browser select Measured Values | C\:( your path ) | Arrow and then right-click and in the
resulting pop-up menu select “Property…”. Set the length property attributes to the same ones in Figure 5C
such that both the measured and solution vectors have the same scale. Change the Custom Color attribute
to red.
 The result is shown in Figure 6.

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 A
B

C
D

Figure 5. Arrow setting attributes and resulting plot of vectors.

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Figure 6. Solution vectors (Black) and measured vectors (Red).

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