PC SWMM vs. XP SWMM 1

Can't answer either, but I've been an XP-SWMM user for most of the last decade, and I can say that XP-SWMM stability issues have gone away, provided you're not working with a model that's been "upgraded" through three or four versions, or has been subject to a lot of data imports from nefarious sources.

The two major drawbacks I see with XP are the cost, which is exorbitant, and the data presentation, which is generally horrid. In order to get any sort of graph that was remotely worthy of including in a report we always had to export node or link data to a text file, import to Excel, and do our own graphs by hand. Their graphing module was bought from some third party, and is terrible, and buggy, and doesn't give you the basic sorts of options that anyone who's ever had a Technical Communication class demands.

I have no experience with PC-SWMM, so I can't offer a point of comparison, but if you need to tap the brain of someone who's done quite a bit of XP modeling sometime later in the project, shoot me an email.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

We use PCSWMM a fair bit. Like any other model, yes it has it's kinks and areas for improvement.

A point to remember is PCSWMM is an enhanced visual dashboard, with some tools added onto the EPA SWMM platform. I've generally found that for 90-95% of the projects that we do, PCSWMM operates fine. Projects with complicated hydraulics, I've found the model to be somewhat unstable, however with some reasearch and the help of this forum as well as the SWMM users forum, we've been able to correct the instabilities.

Never used XPSWMM before, however, you could check the following website and browse XPSWMM vs PCSWMM, I beleieve I've come across some commentary on the comparison before.


Hope this helps. It may also be helpful to post your question on the SWMM users website for additional feedback.

Colleagues,

I should revise my original question above. My first question should read "has anyone experienced instability with XP-SWMM" and not "has anyone experienced instability with PC-SWMM".

I'm basically trying to make a case for disadvantages of using XP-SWMM.

Thanks for your input thus far.

Jon

... and in other news, Autodesk released a SWMM interface for their 2011 product suite. It may be just a Subscription customer bonus, but that just means it'll probably be in the full 2012 release.

"... and in other news, Autodesk released a SWMM interface for their 2011 product suite. It may be just a Subscription customer bonus, but that just means it'll probably be in the full 2012 release."

Our office just installed Civil 3D 2011. Before Civil 3D, I was using EPA SWMM 5.0, then moved onto StormNET (SWMM with support). It seems that Autodesk has purchased some of Boss International's products such as StormNET. The program is now called Autodesk Storm and Sanitary Analysis Stand-Alone 2011. If you are a subscription member with Autodesk and currently run Civil 3D, you can download it for free.

I've been using SWMM and StormNET for a few years and StormNET was extremely buggy (crashing constantly). So far its been smooth sailing with the newer Autodesk product. The one really good advantage to this is Autodesk is pretty good with workflows, tutorials, and user support so hopefully we'll see some additional content come out for this new product.