How to create new scenarios with new elements?

[Vladyman]

I have a network. I’m trying to modify it by adding new elements, and saving it and saving it in the same project but as a different scenario. For instance, in the figure. Left is the original case. Right I included 2 pipes. In the scenario manager, I selected the base scenario, then created a clone (Left figure scenario). I went back to Base scenario and included the pipes. Then, I went back to scenario management and created new scenario (I tried cloning and creating new one).
I run the batch simulation. But when comparing results all the three scenarios are the same one.

How can I have 2 scenarios within one project, but the scenarios have different elements? (E.g. one scenario with more pipes or tanks)

Scenariois.PNG

[Patrick Moore]

Vladimir,

It has to do with what data sets you have defined for each scenario as well as what you have defined on the Facility tab for the given scenario.

If you open the Scenario Manager and look at the two scenarios it will indicate what data sets are used for both scenarios. If they are identical in all data sets, then what you change in one scenario will automatically be used in the other scenario as they use the same group of data. To have differences between scenarios one option is to simply use different data sets for each scenario. The second option is to use facility sets to make one scenario have a different list of active elements than the other. This can allow you to use a single pipe set but to make different pipes active in different scenarios. If you wish to use different hydraulic characteristics for different pipes you would generally have multiple pipe sets to do so, or just use different pipes drawn in parallel and make different ones active in different scenarios.

One of the best ways to familiarize yourself with how scenarios and data sets work is to take a look at the InfoWater User Guide and the extended tutorial 3 titled "Modeling Scenarios Management" on page 3-59 of the user guide document. This illustrates the key concepts needed for understanding scenarios and data sets and should help you grasp how scenarios and data sets work.

You can find the User guide in this location on your computer:
Quick Start Tutorial:
In the Start menu->Programs -> Innovyze-> InfoWater menu open the InfoWater User Guide

Or you can browse to this directory: C:\Program Files(x86)\InfoWater\Help\InfoWater Users Guide.pdf
Sample Models for tutorial
The sample modelsused in the tutorial are found in this directory:C:\Users\Public\Documents\InfoWater\Examples

You can also use the "F1" key when in the scenario manager to get specific contextual help on the different tabs within the scenario manager.

[Alan Stuemke]

Patrick,
The situation covered in Tutorial 3 of the User Guide only involves adding new pipes to a network. However, when the situation involves upsizing existing pipes the use of new Facility Sets (based on a single attribute field) gets much more complicated, because of the impact to ALL the other scenarios. In the situation I am working on I added pipes parallel to the existing pipes but with a larger diameter. Since I'm using the 'Status' field to identify which pipes are active/ON in a particular Facility Set I changed the 'Status' of the existing pipes, which are proposed to be upsized, so they would be OFF and the new (larger) pipes ON in the new scenario, which worked fine. However, because those existing pipes now have a different 'Status' they ended up turned OFF in ALL the other scenarios in the model. Therefore, I had to modify the other Facility Sets to keep them turned ON. Is there a better way to accomplish this without impacting ALL the other scenarios in the model? In lieu of changing the 'Status' of the pipes proposed to be upsized could I use a different field (such as Phase) to toggle them OFF for just my new scenario and not impact ALL the other scenarios?

[Patrick Moore]

Alan,

I have talked with many engineers over the years and many find that using a single pipe set and drawing a second pipe drawn parallel to the one to be replaced to reflect any size updates is often the easiest to do, but you have many options available to you.

The two most common options on the Facility tab that people make use of are the "Query Set" option and the "Intelli-Selection" options.

The Query set option uses one or more queries to identify what elements you want selected in a given scenario. If you make use of the "Auto Pipe Node Inclusion" (checked as "on" the Tools-project preferences in the Operation Settings Tab) you can have a single pipe query in your query set and it will automatically select the node (i.e. point type) elements at the pipe endpoints. If you have this unchecked or if you have at least one node query in the query set, then your query set will need one query for each model element type to tell it how to select the elements to be made active.

Query set selection queries identify which elements are active for a given scenario based on one or more fields of the model elements. The queries need to select the elements you want active, not select what you want as inactive. The most common way to do this is to use the Year Install and year retire fields so that the format looks something like this:

PIPE->YR_INST<=2018 .AND. (PIPE->YR_RETIRE>2018 .OR. PIPE->YR_RETIRE=0)

The Yr Retire section allows pipes to be be made active in the year that a new replacement pipe is added. The new parallel pipe would have a year install of year X, and the old pipe would have a year retire of Year X. The OR statement allows pipes to not have a default Year Retire setting of zero to be made active.

The user can also add a field called "IN_MODEL" or something like it and use this field as an easy way to inactivate pipes for any specific reason you want to not appear in all scenarios. To do this you can add the following wording at the end of the query statement:

PIPE->YR_INST<=2018 .AND. (PIPE->YR_RETIRE>2018 .OR. PIPE->YR_RETIRE=0) .AND. PIPE->IN_MODEL<>'NO'

Users can also use a field added to add or even replace the query statement shown above, but one of the most common ways to use query sets is to take advantage of the year install/year retire fields.

The advantage of drawing the parallel pipe instead of changing the pipe diameter and having a separate pipe set is that it also avoids having to deal with situations where you have one active in one and need to adjust fields and queries for it to be inactive in another scenario. Visually it is also clear which pipes will be adjusted this way as well.

However if you do simply change the diameter you can have the same pipe on for both scenarios, but it would just use a different diameter in each scenario. With that situation, you don't need to worry about query sets to change if something is active, but one can fairly easily get confused as to what values are in what pipe sets using this method, that I've seen many modelers tend to avoid using pipe sets for that very reason. If its pretty simple system this may not be an issue, but in a model of large size it can get hard to keep track of diameter changes with large numbers of pipes in different pipe sets. It is much easier to follow when each pipe contains its own diameter and you just activate one and not another in the scenario as needed.

Using your Status fields of Existing, or Up-sized or whatever, you can easily switch which pipes are active, but you may need to use another field in your query to account for when the pipe should be active. This is an existing pipe that will be replaced so I may have a separate field to exclude those pipes in a given scenario. Because pipes for an existing scenario need to have some way to be active in one scenario and not in another which often requires a complicates query statement. As you can see form your experience this can makes this method challenging at times.

This is the real advantage of using year-install and year retire as usually you have a planning year (say 2018 and then short term improvements are in year 2019 and any pipe to be up-sized would have a year retire of 2019 and the replacement parallel pipe would have a year install of 2019. Then in each scenario you can see results with the existing elements (pipes yr install 2018 or less and yr retire > 2018 and with improvements (yr install 2019 or less and yr retire > 2019). This causes the pipes to switch automatically for each scenario and the user simply has to populate the year retire for any pipe to be replaced with the appropriate planning year and the same year as the install year for the new pipe. Then the query statement for improvements is created and scenarios created using the appropriate query set on the facility tab.

The Intelli-selection option is handy for certain situations, but is not as useful for long term model management. With this option, the first time the scenario is activated all elements are active. The user then can use the facility manager to adjust which elements are active as desired. The model then "remembers" what was active the last time the scenario was used and makes that active again when you return to the scenario. This can be handy if you add new elements that you know will not be added to any other scenario by the query fields and just want those active in this scenario. If the option is decided to get built you can populate the necessary fields to make those elements active in the appropriate scenarios by adjusting the field values used in the facility queries.

But for most modeling situations query sets are the easiest to manage, but intelli-selection can also be handy under certain circumstances.
Simply use which method makes the most sense for your situation.

If you have further questions, please feel free to reply to this post.

Patrick Moore

Patrick,
The situation covered in Tutorial 3 of the User Guide only involves adding new pipes to a network. However, when the situation involves upsizing existing pipes the use of new Facility Sets (based on a single attribute field) gets much more complicated, because of the impact to ALL the other scenarios. In the situation I am working on I added pipes parallel to the existing pipes but with a larger diameter. Since I'm using the 'Status' field to identify which pipes are active/ON in a particular Facility Set I changed the 'Status' of the existing pipes, which are proposed to be upsized, so they would be OFF and the new (larger) pipes ON in the new scenario, which worked fine. However, because those existing pipes now have a different 'Status' they ended up turned OFF in ALL the other scenarios in the model. Therefore, I had to modify the other Facility Sets to keep them turned ON. Is there a better way to accomplish this without impacting ALL the other scenarios in the model? In lieu of changing the 'Status' of the pipes proposed to be upsized could I use a different field (such as Phase) to toggle them OFF for just my new scenario and not impact ALL the other scenarios?