HEC-HMS table name character limits 1

[beej67]

I'm working with a very large HEC-HMS file produced by another consultant for a very large regional flood study, and trying to pull it up in HMS to look at some of the flows and watershed routing they did, to compare to their RAS model. I'm not extremely familiar with HMS, but want to learn about it so I can start using it professionally instead of pay-to-play software.

In trying to load their file, I get a string of errors that look like this:

WARNING 10542: Table name "CBT1-Pond(Lacombe A1 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "CBT1-Pond(Lacombe A1 Detent".
WARNING 10542: Table name "BLTrib4-Res1(Lacombe A1 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "BLTrib4-Res1(Lacombe A1 Det".
WARNING 10542: Table name "CB Pond(Lacombe A2 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "CB Pond(Lacombe A2 Detentio".
WARNING 10542: Table name "CBT1-Pond(Lacombe A2 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "CBT1-Pond(Lacombe A2 Detent".
WARNING 10542: Table name "BLTrib4-Res1(Lacombe A2 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "BLTrib4-Res1(Lacombe A2 Det".
WARNING 10542: Table name "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A1 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A1".
WARNING 10542: Table name "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A2 Detention)" exceeds the maximum limit of 28. Changed name to "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A2".


...etc etc. Pages of them slowly jump across the screen seemingly forever and the project never fully loads before my patience expires. Is this an indication that they did the work in a proprietary platform other than HMS? Is there a workaround?

Also, is there an active forum somewhere for HMS and RAS specific questions outside Eng-Tips? I don't see a software forum here for them, so figured I'd just post in storm/flood looking for responses, but if there's another forum elsewhere I'd love to be pointed in that direction.



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

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SMIAH]

I Never got this error.
Intuitively I guess that I usually name the components with less than 28 characters.

Previous version of HEC HMS (< 3.1.0) had a limit of 30 characters for named components. It was found to cause problems with storing and retrieving some type of results.

Existing data with more than 28 characters have their names automatically truncated. This can cause problems if 2 named components have the same name except the 2 last letters.

I'm surprised about yours as they seem to have more than 28 or 30 characters.

BLTrib4-Res1(Lacombe A1 Detention) = 34

Is it possible to ask the consultant what version of HMS they have?

 

[SMIAH]

For RAS i'd recommend

http://hecrasmodel.blogspot.com/

HMS forum are disappointing for me.

 

[beej67]

I'm loading it off a fresh install of HMS 3.4. The other consultant was CDM, who aren't exactly a small shop, so maybe they did everything in a proprietary package that emulated HMS? That's all I can think of, really. This file is huge, has to be more than 200 sub basins in it, with 3 different alternates each, and 6 design storms. In private consulting I'm not used to files this detailed.


I let it run for an hour and it finally reduced everything to 28 characters and loaded for me. Hopefully there aren't any duplicates, not sure I would be able to even track them down if there were. I'll let you guys know how things progress.

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

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SMIAH]

I think CDM have a version of SWMM5.
Maybe they have one of HMS too.

But what's the point if you can't transfer it to the version that everyone is using.

Hopefully because "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A2" was 1 letter from "CypressBayou DP(Lacombe A1".

 

[beej67]

I learned long ago not to tell other people how to do their business, but rather just to focus on how I do mine.

I'm familiar with XP-SWMM, and it allows you to port to EPA-SWMM. Is it possible they did the basin study in SWMM5 and ported it out to a HMS format?

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

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SMIAH]

Good question! I doubt that a SWMM5 file could be loaded by HMS.

 

[beej67]

It's clearly "intended" to be a HMS file.

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

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SMIAH]

Maybe you could open the .basin file in the folder related to your project (e.g. with wordpad). This will tell you what version was used to create the project.

Basin: Bassin
Last Modified Date: 21 May 2010
Last Modified Time: 15:42:14
Version: 3.4
Unit System: Metric

 

[beej67]

Basin: Lacombe Existing
Description: Bayou Lacombe Watershed Existing Conditions
Last Modified Date: 26 December 2003
Last Modified Time: 09:34:55
Version: 2.2.2
Default DSS File Name: C:\hmsproj\lacombe\lacombe.dss
Unit System: English
Map File: C:\hmsproj\lacombe\lacombe.map
End:


So did 2.2.2 allow 34 characters? Also, is there a place to download older versions of HMS?

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

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[SMIAH]

You probably found by now. If not :

http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-hms/downloads/Hms222Single.exe

I think it let more than 30 characters.

 

[beej67]

Thanks SMIAH.

Yes, HMS 2.2.2 allows more than 30 character names, but it looks like version 3 and after never did. Quite strange to see functionality dialed back like that with no apparent reason, making older models fail to function. Meh, no biggie.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

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

http://www.campbellcivil.com