An Output Canvas is an output device that shows various data visualization tools. You can create Teacups that show the value (often storage) against some full value for that object (full reservoir). You can show multiple teacups in a group to display the relative fullness of many different items. Teacups can be rectangles or trapezoids. See Figure 6.1.

You can also create Flow Lines which often represent the flow of water in a river network. You can configure the flow lines to change thickness based on the flow compared to other values in a group and change color and line type as the flow crosses thresholds defined on each particular flow line. See Figure 6.2.

Following are some features of the Output Canvas:

The remainder of this section describes how to create, configure, and view the Output Canvas. See “Instructions to Create a Teacup Diagram” for instructions on creating a teacup diagram.

Output Canvas configurations are Output Devices (like Plot Pages or RiverWare Data Files, etc.). The Output Canvas is created within the Output Manager dialog. Use one of the following methods to create a new Output Canvas:

The Output Canvas configuration dialog allows you to create or change a canvas. It consists of the following areas, as shown in Figure 6.3.

In the remainder of this section, each of these areas is described in more detail.

The following sections describe all the pieces of the Output Canvas.

The General Settings item display settings apply to the entire Output Canvas. To change a setting’s value, select the appropriate value cell, enter the new value and press Return (or select outside the editing window). See “General Settings” for details.

You control the content of the Canvas in the Canvas Layout area. This content is organized by items, and you specify the Canvas contents by indicating which items should be included. Table 6.1 gives a description of each item and lists all the features you can show on a Canvas.

The following operations allow you to create the Canvas layout and arrange its items as desired:

The Selected Item Settings area allows you to control the appearance of individual Canvas items. This area lists the settings that apply to the item currently selected in the Output Canvas Content area, and allows editing by selecting the current setting value. See “Canvas Items Reference” for details.

This section provides details about the settings that apply to each type of Canvas item.

The following sections provide additional information that is shared among one or more settings.

For all of the colors settings on the canvas, the settings allow you to specify the color in a number of ways. Usually you should use the color selector to specify the desired color. You can select the color from the palette, specify RGB values, or specify Hue/Sat/Val from the dialog. From the text setting, you can also type the hexadecimal color or type in an HTML color name.

For all of the X and Y Position Settings, you can do the following:

When either the number is changed or the item is dragged on the canvas, the other updates accordingly.

For Teacup, Text, and Object groups, select the precision of numeric values shown. Choose from a fixed precision 0-6 or use the precision defined on the Unit Scheme. Select View, then Unit Scheme Manager to see the scheme.

For all of the Slot Reference Type settings, choose whether the slot is on the reference object or its accompanying data object. Object/Slot Name is for the specific object. Data Object/Slot Name is for the accompanying data object. The Output Canvas will try to find an accompanying data object by searching for the object’s name and the string “Data”. You can modify the data object to use if it is not correctly found. See “Output Devices for Aggregated Values” for details on creating aggregated data for display in this or other output devices.

Specify the slot name or use the selector to select a representative slot. For these, you are choosing the slot only, but to do this, you must select a specific object first. The Object part is removed and only the Slot Name is used.

Following are some special provisions regarding the slots:

The Text Item allows you to show text or values on each teacup, object icon, or on the canvas. Specify the type of text using the Text Type setting. Table 6.2 shows the possible values and gives a description of each.

If you want your teacups and object Icons to match the general layout of your simulation view, you can select Edit, then Fit Teacups using Simulation View positions. This rearranges all existing Teacups and Objects with respect to the positions of the corresponding simulation objects within the simulation view.

This tab provides a textual description of the Canvas generation process. The log contains details such as whether slots were found or not and image size and position. When a problem occurs during generation, the details will be reported here.

This section describes additional configuration options for Teacups, particularly the geometry and appearance.

For any particular teacup group, you can choose between the following Teacup Geometry options.

The Maximum Teacup Height applies to the teacup having the largest maximum value. The height of the teacups is computed as follows:

Figure 6.9 shows these geometries, as applied to the largest teacup in the group and another teacup in the same group.

The Show Gap configuration option shows or hides the horizontal gap between the inner current rectangle (or trapezoid) and the outer maximum rectangle (or trapezoid). Figure 6.10 shows examples.

Flow lines have a few additional configuration options that are described in the following section. See “Instructions to Create a Flow Line Diagram” for details.

Each flow line's thickness is an interpolation based on minimum and maximum values and thicknesses. The maximum value should be devised in relationship to the maximum values amongst all flow lines in the group.

A flow line's thickness is computed from value and thickness interpolation settings defined within the containing flow line group.

A reasonable minimum value is 0.0. The maximum value should be chosen which exceeds most slot values among all flow lines in the flow line group in the full time series. One way to determine a good maximum value for a flow line group is shown in Figure 6.11. This involves the following steps.

A flow line's color and style are based on the flow line's current value and where it falls within the defined intervals. The intervals are defined for the group while the thresholds are defined on each flow line. The following section describes the Interval definitions, then the threshold specification.

For a Flow Line Group, the Interval Definitions setting item indicates the number of intervals currently defined. Double-clicking that item presents Click to edit and More. Select More to show the Flow Line Value Interval Display Attributes editor dialog as shown in Figure 6.12.

Using the Plus + button, specify up to nine intervals (Eight Thresholds). The top interval row is for the lowest flow values -- i.e. not exceeding any of a flow line's threshold values. Each interval definition has a text label (used in a Flow Line Legend), a color, and a line style.

Once the intervals are configured and you have created flow lines, now you can specify the threshold values for each Flow Line, specify the thresholds in the Threshold 1 through Threshold N settings. Threshold 1 should be a lower flow than Threshold 2, and so forth. Figure 6.13 shows a flow line group with Two thresholds and three Intervals. The values for each threshold are specified on the individual flow lines.

When adding a Chart to a Chart Group, the Chart selector is immediately shown.

For Chart items, you can specify the height, width, and a scaling factor either as numerical settings or by dragging on the canvas.

The chart has two dragable points which appear near the bottom-right corner.

These icons can be dragged with the mouse. The drag can be aborted by pressing the ESC key. They also support the illustrated context menu operations.

In addition, the chart can only be reduced in width and height to a certain point at which clipping will occur. If you resize it smaller, then the chart will resize to the minimum. A Reset Size operation will also resize the chart to the minimum size. The “Minimum Size” is found iteratively where the chart grows until all components fit on the chart.

The settings supported on Chart Groups, Bounding Boxes, and Charts are illustrated in Figure 6.15.

If the Chart (output device) referred to from the Chart item is missing (E.g. if the Chart output device was deleted or renamed), the placeholder icon in Figure 6.17 is shown with a tooltip indicating that the chart device is missing.

All numeric values are displayed in the units associated with the Teacup Group's unit type, according to the currently active unit scheme. Select View, then Unit Scheme Manager to show the Unit Scheme Manager dialog. Precision of values is typically controlled by unit scheme but can be overridden on Teacup Groups, Text Groups and Object Icon Groups.

The first tab of the panel on the right side of the dialog provides a live preview of what the output Canvas will look like when generated. In fact, this Canvas Preview should be used to define the layout of all of the items added to the canvas. Drag any item to the desired location. The X and Y Positions will update automatically in the settings.

For Flow lines, anchor points are shown on the single selected flow line. These lines support a context menu with the following operations:

By adding many anchor points, you can use flow line to connect two reservoirs, two teacups, or even follow the river channel on the background image.

You can lock items using the checkboxes at the bottom right. Those images that are set to be background layer are controlled by the Background Images checkbox. All other items are locked by selecting the Other Items checkbox.

Right-click any item on the preview to get a Configure menu. This scrolls the content settings on the left to that section’s settings. Additional right-click context-specific menus are available where appropriate.

The Output Canvas Viewer dialog is shown when the Output Canvas is generated. You can generate from the Output Manager or directly from the Output Canvas Configuration by selecting Generate. On the Viewer, the position of all items is locked and cannot be changed. Animation controls at the bottom allow you to manually or automatically scroll through the run timesteps as described in the next section.

From the viewer, the canvas can be:

In addition, an image of the canvas can be included in a Model Report. See “Report Layout Area” for details.

From the Canvas Viewer, you can print the Output Canvas to a printer or to a PDF file (with appropriate drivers). Select File, then Print Preview, then Choose Printer to select the printer to use. Then select File, then Print Preview, then Print Preview to preview the print. Within the preview, you can set orientation, margins, and then select Print to send it to the printer. Figure 6.21 labels these options. Or, select File, then Print to get to the Print dialog directly.

A date selector appears below the canvas in both the preview and generated canvas, as shown in Figure 6.22. It allows the display to be stepped forward and backward through the timesteps. Select Single Start to animate through time (this dialog only). Use the date slider to see where you are in time and the animation speed controls to change the speed (seconds per frame). On the generated canvas, select Coordinated Start/Pause to animate all opened Charts and Output Canvas at the same time. When in coordinated animation mode, you can stop all animations from any dialog. But, from the dialog in which you started the global animation, you can select Single Pause to pause all dialogs. Then use the slider to move the date for all dialogs in a coordinated way. Select Coordinated Start/Pause to end the coordinated animation.

Use the Export Video menu to generate a video file of the output canvas animation.

This tool works by creating images of the output canvas at specified intervals as the output canvas is animated. The images are then combined into a movie file using an external process. You have control over both the sampling of the animation and the creation of the output file.

Select OK to generate the video file. The dialog shows the status of the export.

When finished, it shows the following status.

You can now navigate to the directory where the file was exported and view the file in the appropriate application. In addition, a log file is produced in that same directory with further debugging information on the generation process.

Although the Output Canvas Viewer is the best place to see your Output Canvas, sometimes it is desirable to see certain supported Output Canvas items on the Workspace views. Settings on the Output Canvas Configuration provide the option to show eligible canvas items on the Geospatial View and/or the Simulation View. See “General Settings” for details.

Eligible canvas items are as follows:

When first added to either view, the items are placed in the bottom left of the workspace in an arrangement mimicking that of the output canvas. After they are added, each item may be dragged individually into place. The right-click context menus on the workspace view have the same options as though they were on the Output Canvas. This includes an option to Configure the item, which opens the Output Manager Configuration with that item selected.

For Flow Lines and Canvas Lines, the number of points and relative placement originally comes from the Output Canvas. But, from that point forward, the number of points and location is maintained separately for the Simulation View, Geospatial View and the Output Canvas itself. You can add, remove, or move points as necessary in each view. Thus, you can add more points to a flow line on the Geospatial View than on the simulation view to show more detail, as may be required by the map. All other configuration including colors, line widths, line types, etc are made on the Output Canvas.

In addition, when shown on the workspace, Animation controls are shown in a panel in the lower right part of the workspace. These provide controls to advance the timestep shown on the canvas items through time. See “Animation” for details.

Following are instructions to create a teacup diagram from scratch. These are the bare minimum instructions; you’ll want to modify fonts, colors and label text to make the diagram look great.