The workspace displays the objects representing features in the basin. The object icons are a convenient way to visualize the physical layout of a modeled system. These objects also contain the data and the physical process algorithms that drive the simulation. This section describes how to manage objects on the workspace.

Objects are added to the workspace using the object palette. The Palette contains all of the available object types used to represent features of a river basin. It is the source from which objects are instantiated on the workspace. To place objects on the workspace, drag them off the object palette and place them in the desired location on the workspace. You can access the Object Palette as follows:

An object is created by selecting its icon and dragging it off the Palette onto the workspace. At the time an object is created, the first timestep and timestep size in Series Slots are matched to the Run Control run time settings. The slots show display attributes (Units, Scale, Precision, and Format); see Unit Schemes for details. Default user methods are also selected for new objects. Slots associated with the selected controller and Methods are allocated in memory. See Object Types in Objects and Methods for details on each type of object.

To open an object to see its slots, method selections, accounts, and description:

This displays the Object Viewer. See Object Viewer and Open Object Dialogs for details.

Objects can be selected for various reasons such as moving them, deleting them, or adding them to a subbasin. Once an object or group of objects has been selected, it will be highlighted both on the workspace and in the dockable list window.

The following are ways to select an object on the workspace:

Deleting objects from the workspace by selecting one or more objects, then right-clicking one of them. Select Delete Object from the menu. A confirmation dialog appears to inform that the selected objects will be removed from workspace.

This deletion can also be accomplished by selecting one or more objects and pushing the Delete key or by selecting the objects and then from the main menu select Workspace, then Objects, then Delete Selected Object(s). In both cases, confirmation is still required.

An object can be moved by selecting it and holding down the button while dragging the object to the desired location. This will readjust the links to the object as well. A set of selected objects can be moved while maintaining their relative positions. The selected objects remain visible on the workspace during the move. Moving objects will change the Display Coordinates on the Geospatial view but will not change the Actual Coordinates; see Object Coordinates for details.

Objects on the workspace are shown grey when dispatching is disabled. Tooltips indicate the state as well. A sample is shown in Figure 1.25. In this state, the objects will not dispatch, but they will still execute beginning of run checks. Enable or disable dispatching by right-clicking the selected objects and selecting Enable/Disable Dispatching. See Disabling Dispatching in Debugging and Analysis for details.

Object Clusters allow you to group together simulation objects on the workspace and show only a single icon.

Clusters have the following properties:

Following is more information on how to create and use Clusters.

To create a new cluster, select one or more simulation object icons on the Simulation or Geospatial workspace and do one of the following:

If any of the selected simulation objects are already in a cluster, the Add to Object Cluster context operation is instead presented as Move to Object Cluster. This operation is used to move objects from one cluster to another.

In general, to modify a cluster you can either right-click the cluster on the workspace, right-click the cluster in the Object List, or select the cluster and use the Workspace, then Object Cluster menu.

Following explains the various options, depending on the selection and the menu chosen, as follows:

To see a list of the objects in a cluster, use one of the following methods to open the cluster.

The Open Cluster Dialog shows the member objects in a list. Sort by object type or object name by selecting the column header. From this dialog, you can do the following:

Most of these operations are also available by right-clicking an object/cluster in the Simulation Object List.

Objects can be exported to a file and then imported into the same or another model. Exporting one or more objects includes exporting slot data, method selections and optionally links, accounts and supplies. Objects can be imported and exported to and from the workspace as follows.

To export, first select, one or more objects. Then select Workspace, then Objects, then Export Object from the main workspace. The user is then presented with the Export RiverWare Simulation Object File dialog, which is used to specify how the objects should be exported and to which file the objects should be written. Figure 1.29 illustrates.

The following options are available for exporting depending on the model and possibly the selected objects’ components.

When exporting objects and links, only those links between exported objects will be written. Similarly, only those supplies between exported accounts will be written. In addition, the following are not exported:

To import, use the Workspace, then Objects, then Import Object menu from the RiverWare workspace. On import, the objects will have the same name as the original object unless an object by the same name already exists in the model. In this case, an integer is added to the object’s name. The following options are available on import.

Imported objects are automatically selected (highlighted). Typically the user will then move all of the imported objects immediately to the desired location by dragging them on the workspace. This is especially true if they are on top of other objects. While the objects are still selected, it may be useful to create a subbasin of these objects so they may be easily selected later. See Creating New Subbasins for instructions on creating a subbasin from the selected objects.

Objects are similar to model files; they can only be imported in models that have the same or higher version number, e.g. an object exported from a RiverWare 5.0 model can only be imported into RiverWare 5.0, 5.1, etc.

When an object or supply is imported and the name already exists in the model, the newly imported objects will be renamed by adding a number to the end of the name. The supplies will then be renamed using the default supply naming convention, “Object# Account to Object# Account”. A warning message is posted. If this new name is not available, because of multiple supplies between the same two accounts, the word “DUPL” is added to the end of the supply name to make it unique. These supply names can be changed from the account configuration. Accounts should not need to be renamed as account names are not unique only the object names are.

There are a number of scenarios in which import/export of objects could be useful. One such example is when a team of modelers wish to break up a model and have various people work on different components. Following are some tips for this process.

Each team member would take the full model and then pare it down to the desired objects, do the modeling work and then recombine the pieces into one model. To pare down a model, it is typically better to delete unused objects than to export and import the desired objects into another model. By deleting objects, the Run Control parameters--run range, timestep length, controller, settings--are preserved. Also, the output devices, DMIs, object level accounting methods are then available in the pared down model.

To then recombine the model with the original, it is best to delete the objects from the original model and then import the new objects from the pared down version(s). This prevents naming conflicts and having to rename newly imported objects.