New Flextable features in 08.11.06.58+ (Water products) and 08.11.05.113+ (Storm/Sewer products)

  Applies To 
  Product(s):
WaterGEMS, HAMMER, WaterCAD, SewerGEMS, SewerCAD, StormCAD, CivilStorm
  Version(s): 08.11.06.58+ (water), 08.11.05.113+ (storm/sewer)
  Environment:  N/A

How to

What are the new flextable features added in the late 2015/early 2016 releases of the OpenFlows products and how do I use them?

Note: this applies to version 08.11.06.58+ for WaterCAD, WaterGEMS and HAMMER and version 08.11.05.113+ for SewerGEMS, SewerCAD, StormCAD and CivilStorm.

As of this writing, these features are not yet added to PondPack. Starting with the CONNECT Edition, FlowMaster uses some of these new features (notably the change to selecting columns).

Solution

The new features are outlined in the example video below. Below the video are also descriptions of the individual features.  

Several usability improvements have been added to Flextables:

Freeze, Select, Add, Remove Columns

The flextables have some very useful new features added. By right clicking on the grey column headers you will see the Freeze Column, Select Column, Add Column, and Remove Column options. 

Freeze Column – Will freeze that column and all columns to the left of it, so when you have a lot of columns in your flextable and need to scroll to the right you can freeze columns. For example, this is come be useful to keep a column like the label constantly visible for identification purposes as you access other columns.

Select Column – Allows you to easily select all the records in that column, which is useful if you want to copy the data from that row to spreadsheet.

Add Column and Remove Column – In previous versions in order to add or remove a columns, you’d need to click the edit button at the top of the flextable, but now you can easily select a property to add to your flextable through the add column option. When you move your mouse cursor over the add option a popup menu appears that breaks all the columns down by their category (general, physical, results, geometry, etc…). This makes finding properties much simpler than choosing from the entire alphabetized listed using the edit button in previous version. If you still prefer the using the edit button to add and remove your columns you will still have that option. 

Element selection by highlighting rows

 Another feature that adds great flexibility is the ability to select rows in the flextable by clicking on them. Rows are selected the same way you select them in an Excel spreadsheet.  Once selected you can right click on the row header and choose “Open on Selection”. This will filter your flextable by the rows you’ve choose.

This will allow you to perform tasks such as creating a selection set or adding to a selection set with more ease.  It will also allow you to select the elements in the drawing that you have selected in the flextables. In previous versions both of these tasks would have to be done in the drawing pane or by using queries.  

The screen shots below show the process of filtering a flextable on row selection and show the menus for making selection sets and selecting elements in the drawing. 

While the flextable is filtered you now also have the option to right click and global edit on a column for only the features in that selection set.

Sort arrow

In the screen shot below you’ll see a small arrow has been added to columns that are sorted to indicated whether the sort is in ascending or descending order. 

Faster filter work workflow with auto selection

When your right click on a column and choose to filter it using a query that column will now automatically be selected in the query builder to allow for faster queries to be created. In the screen shot below if you clicked on the diameter field outlined in blue and choose to filter by a query the diameter field in red would be automatically selected when the query builder opened. 

Find text in the Flextable for faster feature location and selection

Click the binoculars icon 

It will open this dialog that allow you to enter text to search the flextable based on 

Export to Excel

Previously, data could be exported to Excel via the Flextables, but needed to be done one by one and did not include time series. Now, there is an ability to export data for all element types at once, including time series (results over time). 

Steps:

  1. Go to, File > Export > Export to Excel.
  2. Then, in the Export to Excel dialog, specify properties and elements to be exported. Click OK. Note: these settings will be saved for the next export.
  3. In the Flextable Export dialog, select either Excel or CSV format and specify where it will be exported. Click OK

See Also

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