5.30 - Production Release (June 2023)

eWater is pleased to release Source 5.30, which captures improvements and enhancements from January 2023 to June 2023, key activities include:

• incorporating the functionality in the Farm Dams plugin into core Source
• updates to the Hot start functionality to allow users to define a file name and date for the hotstart to be saved in the command line
• performance improvements
• introduction of a tool to determine all functionality being used in a project
• a wide range of bug fixes and minor enhancements
• long-term maintenance, including upgrades to Toolkit.

Farm dams are now part of core Source

A major focus of this release has been to incorporate the functionality of the Farm Dams plugin into core Source, this includes:

• Two new node types added to the node palette:
  • Onstream Farm Dam
  • Farm Dam Observation Point (retained for backwards compatibility)

• Bulk change of node types, from the Geographic Editor, allows the user to change multiple nodes to a new node type based on locations specified in a shapefile

This makes it possible for farm dam models to be built in the Geographic Wizard without loading the plugin. It also ensures ongoing maintenance of the functionality. Backwards compatibility with older farm dam models is maintained so that models previously created using the plugin can be imported into the latest Source version. However, older models using the FarmDams plugin must be brought up to Source version 5.20 before being imported to the plugin-free version.

Hot Start enhancements

Enhancements have been made to allow the user to define a file name and date for the hotstart to be saved in the command line, so it can be accessed by another file. This allows a user to automatically run a model overnight to save to the last day of record and use it as the warm-up for the scenario model. 

Performance improvements

Projects containing a large number of functions can have performance and stability issues both through the commandline and in the Source user interface. A new application option has been added to disable the calculation and display of references between functions. With the option enabled the load and run time for projects and scenarios with a large number of functions will be significantly improved. Enabling the option though will disable deletion validation in the UI.

Source Projects Analytics File

As part of our long-term maintenance focus, we have created a tool to identify the Source functionality used in a project. This will give critical insights to help prioritise maintenance and insights into how important different components of Source are to users. The tool is accessed via the RiverSystem commandline application, results can be saved on the local hard drive or sent to eWater. It is available as an extra option in Command Line Runner Single Analysis

--saveAnalytics

--saveAnalytics
--saveAnalytics "C:\\foldername\\analyticsfilename.anl.xml"

Enhancements &. Bug Fixes

Some other smaller enhancements and bug fixes are:

• users can now delete or rename Functional Units

• assign minimum and maximum pond levels through scenario input sets
• resolving a bug in the Piecewise linear variable to recognize decimal places
• resolving a bug in Results Manager that was preventing the comparison of calibration results of storage levels 
• changes to automatically remove the relevant application such as the rainfall-runoff and constituent model after functional units are deleted
• bug fixes to allow Minimum Flow Requirements that are set through the Min Flow node to be overridden through the Tabular Editor, including when the flow is set by either a rule curve or monthly pattern.

Long term maintenance

Over the past year, eWater has been prioritising a number of critical long term maintenance activities, including:

• audit of technologies used, including supporting and 3rd party technologies as well as core technologies 
• preliminary risk assessment of these technology dependencies
• critical maintenance to Toolkit and updates to improve the user experience, including a more seamless process for freeing up floating licences and resolving issues with user verification.