HSPFToolkit™ Program Features

If you just want to look at the Program Guide (documentation), . . .

UCIEditor™ Features

• Collapsing editor by HSPF Groups
• Context sensitive help.  The program knows what line you are on and help will display information about the data.
• Point and click Catalog lookups.
• Point and click customizable defaults tables.
• Support for every HSPF feature.
• Support for just about any HSPF engine you want to run.
• Automatically inserts a new header for whatever Group you are working in.
• Allows you to comment sections of code to your hearts content.  (This was a major problem with all front ends that we encountered, and in fact drove us to realize the limitations of front ends).
• Bookmarking feature that enables you to work on a section of the UCI file, then jump to another section, then back again.
• Commenting toggle for selected lines.
• Copy down where appropriate.  The ability to automatically propagate a number to all selected rows below it.
• FTable Flow and Stage lookup.  Select a FTable, and ask the program to return the flow given a stage or a stage given the flow from the table.  It does the interpolation for you.
• Cut and paste FTable from EXCEL.  Yep, cut a table from EXCEL and paste it into the UCI.  The program formats it for you.
• Multiplier manager, it is customizable based on the multipliers/conversion factors that you use.
• Snippet creators for MASS-LINK, EXT SOURCES, PERLND AND IMPLND.  These are dialogs (actually remenants of our earlier versions) that will insert pieces of code at the cursor location.  We may write a lot more of these, but it depends of feedback from users.  At some point, it's easier to type what you want than to tell a dialog what to insert.
• Schematic Summaries.  Highlight a group of lines in the Schematic Group and the program will tell you the total acres (big deal), Percent outwash, Percent Till and Percent Imp/Saturated (now that's interesting)!  Hint, you need to know in order to compute Water Quality Rates.
• Oh, did we mention that we have a snapshot manager?  Yep, you no longer have to save your UCI file under a different name as a backup.   HSPFToolKit™ has a built-in snapshot manager that will let you save as many snapshots of your UCI file that you want, . . . and restore it at any time.  It takes a snapshot of your UCI file right when you open it.  That way, if you are fooling around and suddenly decide that it was a bad idea, you can restore the file to its starting condition for the session.  A great way to manage scenarios.
• Bi-directional schematic layout support for SCHEMATIC, RCHRES, and EXT TARGETS Blocks.

WDMPeek™ Features

What's WDM Peek™?  It's the second program that is part of the HSPFToolKit™.  Being able to create and edit UCI files is one thing but designers need to know the results.  They need to be able to PEEK into the WDM file to see whats there!

• Open a UCI file and the program will know what WDM files are associated with it.  If there are more that one, you can select which you want to peek into.
• Lists all time series within the WDM file by DSN, start and end date, station description.
• Enumerates all Attributes associated with each DSN (pretty boring so far).
• Log Pearson Type III on any time series that you choose.  Not just a plain log pearson, but also the graph AND the CONFIDENCE RANGE for each return frequency.  The data out past the 25 year return frequency is so thin, that decisions based solely on the return frequency without consideration of the confidence range is only half using half of the data.  We have found that in many cases the 95% confidence interval for a 100 year event overlaps the 50 year return frequency!!
• If Log Pearson doesn't meet your needs, we support Cunnane, Gringorton, Gumbel, Log Normal, and Weibull plotting positions.
• Of course peak yearly and ranked peaks for any time series.
• Return years.  Yep, the program will tell you the actual years that comes closest to the return frequency year. 
• Oh, and the program can extract those time series for you, . . . it can extract the yearly time series by closest return frequency, by wettest year, by average year or by dryest year!   AND it will do it to a file or just to the clipboard so you can paste into EXCEL!
• Did we mention that WDM Peek also looks at return frequency by VOLUME?  Yep, it will give you a 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 year return volume frequency!  What????  Think about it.  Engineers always talk about return frequencies as in a recurring flow rate.  In a lot of cases, what they are really interested in is the return frequency of a runoff volume!  There are times when engineers really want to know what the 100 year return volume is!  NOT the same, and when you are focused on detention facilities, knowing how much volume to design for is much more important than the peak rate that enters the facility.  Yes, you can extract time series by volume.
• And yes, StormShed3G™ can run those time series!
• Yes, we support Gringorton ranking as an alternative to Log Pearson Type III.  It's interesting to compare the two, they generally don't agree, we only support the methodogies, and endorse neither.
• One of the impedements that we faced when initially using HSPF was knowing if we got everything or if everything was converted properly.  So the program offers a nifty little feature called sum of all points.  Basically, it will tell you the total volume of a time series.  Why is that important? Because if you are routing a number of basins through at pond and splitting the flow, it would be nice to be able to sum all the volumes going into the pond and compare it with all the volumes coming out of the pond.  The sum of the parts must equal the whole no matter what program you are using!  A black box won't do that for you.  As simple as this feature is, it is the primary method we have found to gain confidence in your HSPF results.
• OH, did we mention that HSPFToolKit™ does pond sizing too?  Tell the program the DSN number that you are designing against, and the DSN number entering the pond and the program will let you mix and match storage and discharge structures to meet you design requirments.  This is our third version of our continous model pond sizing algorithm. And you know what?  Automatic pond sizing is a joke.  Our mix and match, on the fly is a lot more fun, probably takes a little longer (maybe, . . . probably not!) but you end up with an optimized answer, not one that you can then "refine".  Besides, after using our pond sizing tool, you will have a really good feel for sensitivity of miniscule changes.

Conclusion

There's lots of other "little" programming features that we haven't even started discussing.  Before you try HSPFToolkit™, understand that HSPFToolKit™ is designed to enhance the professional skills of those that use it by making the arduous task of writing the UCI easier.  It's not going to be a black box and attempt to write the UCI for you, however, the schematic feature will write UCI commands directly to the SCHEMATIC, RCHRES, and EXT TARGETS blocks.  But understand that running HSPF through a black box front end doesn't make you proficient in HSPF, in fact, we feel that relying on black box type front ends actually DEPOWERS (the opposite of empowers) the engineer.  That's reality. after two attempts at front ends for HSPF, we have come to the conclusion that the UCI is actually a great front end and simply needed to enter the 21st century.  HSPFToolKit™ will help you/force you to  understand what needs to be written and provides relevant supporting lookup material when you need it.

The ability to peek into the WDM file and look at the time series in meaningful ways as part of the overall HSPFToolKit™ is really empowering from a decision making point of view.  To be able to do it with a few clicks is empowering.   

We have created a series of video walk throughs to familiarize you with the interface, and features.