A long-section between two nodes: ground, conduit inverts and crowns, node shafts, the HGL at the animated instant, and the maximum-HGL envelope of the run. It answers the question the map cannot: where does the water surface sit against the pipe and the ground along this path?
Three ways:
Esc cancels).The From and To dropdowns in the view's strip change the path without going back to the map; Swap reverses it. The path between the two nodes is found through the model's links, in either direction, so a profile can run against the flow; it is drawn from the first node station 0. If no chain of links joins the two nodes the view says so.
The geometry comes from the model file the engine ran, reduced to inverts, crowns, rims, offsets and lengths, by the engine's own rules rather than the drawing's convenience:
LINK_OFFSETS ELEVATION the offset column is an absolute
elevation and is converted to a depth above the node invert, never below
it.Geom1 for the standard closed shapes).MaxDepth is zero or absent takes its rim
from the highest crown among the links that connect to it, which is what
the engine does when it validates a junction (UM §3.3). Otherwise rim =
invert + MaxDepth.Length. Pumps, orifices,
weirs and outlets have no length and are given a short nominal span so
the plot can show them without stacking two nodes on one station.A drop structure therefore shows as a step in the invert at the node, and the shaft runs from the node invert to the rim.
Two lines:
Depth at the reporting period on the Time slider, joined
node to node. The slider is shared with the Results map, so scrubbing
time moves both..out. The
engine reports at REPORT_STEP, so the animated line is a
set of snapshots and can miss the true peak between steps; the envelope
is the maximum of those snapshots at every node. Where it reaches the
rim the node was surcharged to the surface — flooding if
ALLOW_PONDING is off, ponding if it is on (§16.4).The elevation shown is the node's own invert plus depth, which is what the engine reports as the node's head when the two agree; if you have edited a node's invert since the run, the run's depth is drawn on the new invert until you run again (see §11.5).
The HGL is drawn between node heads only; no attempt is made to draw
a water surface inside a conduit between nodes, because the
.out does not carry one (it carries the link's depth at its
midpoint, which is a different thing).
node, kind, station,
invert, rim, hgl,
max_hgl, link_in, link_in_invert,
link_in_crown, link_out,
link_out_invert, link_out_crown, in feet or
metres by FLOW_UNITS.The same station table is a block of the Model Report (§2.10).
The geometry is the model open in the editor, as it is now — saved or not, run or not — so a model converted from a storm-sewer file, or one you are still drawing, has a profile straight away. The HGL of a run is the run's: if you edit inverts after a run, the profile shows the edited geometry with the heads the engine computed for the old one until you run again.
The first path offered is the model's first node to its first
outfall. A model's 2D sidecar, its DEM and any
<model>.2d.out beside it load with the model, so a
model reopened after a 2D run draws its terrain and water at once (§11.7).
After Analyze (F6, chapter 12) the profile also draws the
storm-sewer design's grade lines for every conduit on the path: the
Design HGL as a solid violet line from the conduit's
upstream HGL to its downstream HGL, and the Design EGL
dashed above it by the velocity head V²/2g. Design
HGL/EGL in the strip turns them off. These are the
standard-step results of the design storm, not a routed hydrograph:
compare them with the simulation's Max HGL, not with the HGL at an
instant.
With a DEM loaded in 2D Setup (§20.3) the profile also draws the Terrain (DEM) along the pipes: the ground sampled every half cell along each conduit's plan path — its nodes and vertices — and laid on the conduit-length stations of the long-section, so the ground between two manholes sits over the pipe that runs under it. The node line is then labelled Rim: where the rims and the DEM agree the two meet at every manhole, and where they do not the gap is the disagreement between the model and the ground.
With 2D results the profile adds the surface water:
After a coupled run the profile carries both halves on one section: the engine's HGL in the pipes, from the coupled run's own 1D results, and the 2D water over the terrain above them. The header names the 1D period and the 2D frame. After a 2D-only run the pipes have no HGL — there was no 1D run — but the terrain and the water are drawn along them.
A 2D model has water where there are no pipes. 2D → Draw
Profile Line takes clicks on the map as the vertices of a
section line; Enter or a double-click finishes it and opens the Profile
view along it, stationed by plan distance from the first vertex (marked
A on the map, where the line is drawn dashed). The
strip gains Along: Pipes / Section line to switch
between the two; the node pickers belong to Pipes.
Along a section line the plot is the terrain and the 2D water only,
Max water switches the dashed maximum, and
Export CSV writes station,
ground, wse_2d, max_wse_2d for
every sample. 2D → Clear Profile Line removes the
line.
The water surface is the DEM ground plus the 2D depth: the solver's bed is the DEM resampled to its cells, so on a coarse grid the drawn surface follows the DEM's finer ground rather than the cell's average.