How to plot, animate and customise a Long Section of 1D river results

In the Results tab, click the Long Section button.

The Long Section Selection (River Results) window will open. If no nodes are selected prior to clicking the button, a pop-up will ask if you want to select all nodes in the network. The nodes selected can be adjusted in the Long Section Selection (River Results) window anyway if you change your mind.

If you have a plot settings file (extension .psf), load this using the Load Plot Settings button in the Toolbar at the bottom. Otherwise, specify your plot settings as listed below (click on each item for further information).

Select nodes

The Available Items list on the left displays all nodes available for plotting from your active 1D river network. Those currently selected are displayed in the Selected Items list on the right. These are the ones that will be added to the plot.

Click the buttons located between the lists to move items from one list to the other. You need at least 2 nodes selected (to plot the Long Section between these.) When a node is added to the Selected Items list, it is removed from the Available Items list (and vice versa when nodes are removed from the Selected Items list).

Two ways to make this faster:

• Use the Load button (below the Available Items list) to load a pre-defined list of nodes from a text file. A Save button is also provided to store node lists (as text files) for re-use with other simulations.
• Select multiple nodes in your river network before clicking the Long Section button and these will automatically populate the Selected Items list. You may find this page on Selecting multiple nodes helpful.

Confirm results/calibration data files (or choose none for bed level!)

Your results file(s) will be displayed in a list. Use the checkboxes provided to select which results to plot.

Add more results files by clicking the Add Results/Cus. File(s) button located below the list. You can browse to results files (extension .zzl) or calibration data files (extension .cus). Files you add should contain data associated to (at least some of) the nodes selected in the network.

Calibration data files can be created using the Cus (Long Section) File Editor tool in the Calibration Tools section of the Toolbox panel. Calibration data can also be specified in a simple .csv format with times specified in the first column and data in subsequent columns (and a single header row).

Select variable(s)

A table lists all possible variables available for plotting. The default selection is the Stage variable only. You can untick this and select a different variable. Equally, you can tick multiple variables.

If a max/mean/min (.mmm) results file has been generated in addition to the standard time series results file, then the variables within this will be automatically added to the variables list and be available for plotting. The values in the mmm file can provide more accurate max, mean and min values because they are calculated from all calculation timesteps (max stage in the zzl file is calculated only from the saved results, i.e. depends on save interval).

Select the plot time range

Click in the field provided and enter the required Selected Time of the plot.

The Start Time and End Time relate to animation of the plot. The default is the full analysis period of the specified results file, and a button is provided to reset the values to these defaults.

Save settings for future use

All your settings can be saved using the Save Plot Settings button in the Toolbar at the bottom. The plot settings file (extension .psf) is an xml format text file. This can then be recalled in a later session to quickly recreate the same charts again, e.g. if you make changes to your model and re-run the simulations.

Click the Plot button in the Toolbar to display the Long Section graph. The plot will have a title and legend added automatically.

Charts can be animated using the Play button located on the chart Toolbar and fully customised using the Quick-Edit button on the chart Toolbar. Please see the technical reference for details on Quick-Edit functionality, Toolbar functionality and Right-click menu functionality.

Use the X in the upper right corner of the chart to close the chart window when you’ve finished with it.