In this post, I will explain how you can import massive data from shape files to Giswater using the QGIS interface.
First of all, you must to know the main rules of Giswater. These rules are:
1) Sector pertinency. This means that each node and each arc of our network must to be associated to one sector (no geo-spatial analisys, simply using field calculator) but obviously, you must to have at least one sector in the sector layer
2) Catalogs use. Materials, arcs (conduits only SWMM) and hydrology scenarios (subcatchment only SWMM) have a catalog. You must to fill at least one record in this tables in order to put this information in the hydraulic/hydrologic feature tables
3) Arc-Node topology. Giswater runs under arc-node topology. You must to know that each arc must have two nodes (one at start and one at the end). This seems easy, but if you try to import shape file of arcs, may be you will have problems if you have not checked this.
4) Hydraulic class of features. In order to create or use copy-paste tools to introduce features into your network, you must to use the hydraulic layers of the TOC of GIS. Let me say. If you would like to introduce one, or two or two-thousand of nodes as a junction, you must to use the layer of JUNCTIONS. On the other hand, if you would like to introduce one, or two or three nodes as a reservoir you must to use the layer of RESERVOIR.
If you know and understand these four rules, then you can proceed:
1) Create a new Giswater project
2) Add your network features shape file into the TOC of your GIS project
3) Identify what is the layer to introduce this information on GIS project. This layer should be one layer of GIS TOC project (Hint: junctions, outfalls, pipes, conduits, etc from hydraulics GIS TOC agrupation)
4) Rename the fields of your shape file with the name of the fields of the destination layer in order to success your next step.
5) Start editing of the destination layer, and proceed to copy features from your shape file to the destination layer, using the standard GIS copy and paste features tools.
6) Remember the rules of Giswater before finish the destination layer’s edition. (You need to fill the fields of arccat_id, matcat_id or sector_id). If you don’t have values, you must to create at least one record into the catalog tables and sector layer.