Vlex4D Basic - Tutorial Vistas

December 2019

Ian Hunt

Email mailto:ian@gdms.com.au

+61 (0) 400 3322 05

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Contents
1 Purpose of Tutorial ......................................................................................................................... 4
2 Creating a New Project ................................................................................................................... 4
‘Tutorial Vistas’ Setup ..................................................................................................................... 4
Open the “Basic View 1” project..................................................................................................... 4
Save As New Project ....................................................................................................................... 5
3 Creating a new Polygon Model Boundary ...................................................................................... 5
Create a new Layer ......................................................................................................................... 5
Set the Coordinate Grid display ...................................................................................................... 6
Digitising new data into a layer....................................................................................................... 8
Exporting Layer Data to a Shape File ............................................................................................ 10
4 Create Basic Groundwater Model................................................................................................. 11
Setting up a Groundwater Vistas (GWV) model ........................................................................... 11
Importing Model Outline .............................................................................................................. 12
Setting ‘No Flow’ boundaries ........................................................................................................ 14
5 Importing GWV grid to Vlex4D ..................................................................................................... 15
Exporting groundwater model data from GWV............................................................................ 15
Importing GWV grid results to Vlex4D .......................................................................................... 15
Reviewing the Imported GWV Grid .............................................................................................. 17
6 Enhancing GWV Model ................................................................................................................. 19
Adding new Constant Head boundaries ....................................................................................... 19
Importing Constant Head boundaries to GWV ............................................................................. 20
Exporting Grid containing Run Results to Vlex4D ......................................................................... 23
Importing ‘Grid_CH.s3d’ file to Vlex4D ......................................................................................... 23
Adding Pumping Wells .................................................................................................................. 25
Editing Attributes for a layer ......................................................................................................... 25
Exporting ‘Pumping Rate’ data to GWV ........................................................................................ 28
Importing ‘Pumping Well’ model run to Vlex4D ........................................................................... 29
Reviewing ‘BC-Type’ values in GWV grid ...................................................................................... 30
Refinement of Grid with MODFLOW USG .................................................................................... 31
7 Tutorial Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 33

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Figure 1. Open 'Basic View 1' project...................................................................................................... 5
Figure 2a & 2b. Creating a new Polygon Layer ....................................................................................... 6
Figure 3. 'Display Coordinates' location on Toolbar ............................................................................... 7
Figure 4. Setting Display Coordinates ..................................................................................................... 7
Figure 5. Changing the Coordinate Grid display ..................................................................................... 8
Figure 6. Digitising New Layer Data ........................................................................................................ 9
Figure 7. Digitise Model Boundary.......................................................................................................... 9
Figure 8. Export Layer to Shape File...................................................................................................... 10
Figure 9. Create new GWV model......................................................................................................... 11
Figure 10. GWV initial Grid Setup ......................................................................................................... 11
Figure 11. Basic MODFLOW grid ........................................................................................................... 12
Figure 12. Save Button in GWV ............................................................................................................. 12
Figure 13. GWV with imported Boundary Outline ................................................................................ 13
Figure 14. Coordinate transformation in GWV ..................................................................................... 13
Figure 15. Selecting the 'No Flow' boundary condition ........................................................................ 14
Figure 16. No Flow cells outside 'Model Outline' ................................................................................. 14
Figure 17. Export GWV grid to Vlex4D .................................................................................................. 15
Figure 18. Import GWV grid file to Vlex4D ........................................................................................... 16
Figure 19. Import GWV Modelling Form............................................................................................... 16
Figure 20. View Imported Grid.............................................................................................................. 17
Figure 21. Uncheck 'Z Color Range'....................................................................................................... 17
Figure 22. Set 'Attribute Color Index'.................................................................................................... 18
Figure 23. Set Colour for BC attribute................................................................................................... 18
Figure 24. Display 'Active' and 'Inactive' cells ....................................................................................... 19
Figure 25. Digitise new Constant Head boundaries .............................................................................. 20
Figure 26. Select Constant Head edit mode ......................................................................................... 20
Figure 27. Selecting Shape file import for Constant Heads .................................................................. 21
Figure 28. Set Elevation values for Constant Head Import ................................................................... 21
Figure 29. Run the GWV model with the 'Recalculate' button ............................................................. 22
Figure 30. Import GWV model run results ............................................................................................ 22
Figure 31. Contours of Model Run Results ........................................................................................... 23
Figure 32. Results of GWV grid import to Vlex4D ................................................................................. 24
Figure 33. Set TIN Surface values for Water Levels .............................................................................. 24
Figure 34. Results of Water Level surface from GWV model ............................................................... 25
Figure 35. Add new Pump Rate Field to Attribute Layer ...................................................................... 26
Figure 36. Add Pumping Well data ....................................................................................................... 27
Figure 37. Set 'Pumping Wells' display Properties................................................................................ 28
Figure 38. Editing Layer Attributes ....................................................................................................... 28
Figure 39. Display results from 'Pumping Wells' model run ................................................................. 29
Figure 40. Display of GWV model results with dewatering wells ......................................................... 30
Figure 41. Model Boundary Colours with ‘Ddn’ values ........................................................................ 31
Figure 42. Refined GWV model as displayed in GWV ........................................................................... 32
Figure 43. Refined GWV model as displayed in Vlex4D ........................................................................ 32
Figure 44. Refined GWV model represented in Vlex4D ........................................................................ 33

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 1 Purpose of Tutorial
The purpose of this tutorial is to explore how to use Vlex4D to prepare and provide data for
groundwater modelling as well as how to import the results from a groundwater modelling exercise
back into Vlex4D for 3D visualisation and review.

One of the core functionalities (and system development areas) is to make the Vlex4D system
easy to use for visualising and interpreting data before transferring that knowledge to other
modelling systems in an easy and intuitive way.

This tutorial relies on the understanding gained in Tutorial One and it will build on some of the
functionality covered in Tutorial One.

2 Creating a New Project

The focus of this tutorial is to introduce the user to more Vlex4D functions as well as exporting data
to Groundwater Vistas (developed by ESI at http://groundwatermodels.com) and then importing
modelling results back into Vlex4D again. This tutorial will open Tutorial One and save it as ‘Tutorial
Vistas’.

‘Tutorial Vistas’ Setup

Use the Windows Explorer tool to create a folder on the C: drive called “Tutorial Vistas” (or on any
connected or mapped drive) and under the “Tutorial Vistas” folder create a sub-folder called “Data”.
Then copy and extract the contents of the “Tutorial 2.zip” file to the “Data” folder.

In order to keep the data that is used in the Vlex4D tutorials in a structured format it is
suggested that the user create a dedicated folder on a local hard drive or mapped network
drive where the tutorial will be created.

Also create a sub folder called “Exports” under the ‘Tutorial Vistas’ folder as well as a sub folder called
“Vistas” under the “Tutorial Vistas” folder.

The “Vistas” folder is where the groundwater model will be set up for this tutorial.

Copy/extract the contents of the “GWV Tutorial.zip” file to the ‘Vistas’ sub folder as “GWV
Tutorial.gwv”. This is the Groundwater Vistas project file that was used in this tutorial.

Start the Vlex4D application by double clicking the Vlex4D icon on your desktop or by following the
appropriate Windows App menus to the system location as installed previously.

Open the “Basic View 1” project

Once the Vlex4D system has started up, it will display a 'Quick Start' form and the existing “Basic View
1.scp” project must be selected by clicking on it once with the left mouse button. Then click the “Open”
button to open the existing project for this tutorial as shown in Figure 1 below.

The system will then open and display the data for the ‘Basic View 1’ project.

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Figure 1. Open 'Basic View 1' project

Once the project is open it will be saved to the new C:\Tutorial\Vistas” folder with the new
project name.

Save As New Project

Click on the “File -> Save As…” menu item to display the “Save As” form that is very similar to a
standard Windows ‘File Save As’ form.

Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas” folder (that was created previously) and type in the name “Basic
Vistas” in the Filename box and click on the ‘Save’ button. This will become the project name for the
rest of the tutorial.

The Vlex4D system will create a new project file with the same layers as in the previous tutorial.
It will also copy the internal layer files to the new directory so that the layer files can be used
in this new project

3 Creating a new Polygon Model Boundary

A new polygon layer must be created in Vlex4D to define the boundary of a groundwater model
for the purpose of this tutorial. (The boundary will be a slightly modified rectangular ‘box’ for
simplicity in demonstrating the process). This boundary will be exported as a shape file and
imported into Groundwater Vistas (GWV) to help locate and define the modelling area in GWV.

Create a new Layer

Right Click with the right mouse button in the ‘Layer List’ to display the Layer List ‘pop-up’ menu and
click the ‘Create Layer’ menu item on the ‘pop-up’ (marked with the red circle in Figure 2a below) and
the system will display the “New Layer” form.

Please note that the Layer List ‘pop-up’ menu contains other options such as:

Import file – the same as importing an external file with the top left ‘Import File’ toolbar button

Copy Layer – this will make a duplicate layer with a new name

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 Properties – the same as double clicking a layer to display the ‘Layer Properties’

Attributes – to edit and manage attribute data for a layer

Export – to export the data in a layer to an external format

Delete Layer – the same as the red button with the minus sign on the toolbar. This removes a
layer from the layer list in the project but does not remove it from storage on the hard drive or
network drive.
Figure 2a & 2b. Creating a new Polygon Layer

This will display the ‘New Layer’ Form. Type in the name of the new layer as “Model Outline” in the
‘Layer Name’ text box and click the ‘Polygon’ option from the list of layer types in the ‘dropdown list’
below the layer name (shown with the red circle in Figure 2b above).

Click the “OK” button on the ‘New Layer’ form and the system will create a new polyline layer in the
layer list at the bottom of the current list of layers.

Note that the list of new layers includes the following types of layers:

Point layers – to manage and display point data similar to GIS layers

Polyline layers – to manage and display lines and polylines similar to GIS layers

Polygons layers - to manage and display polygons similar to GIS layers

Bore layers – to create and manage bore data

3D Modelling layers – to group layers into a grouping and set the geographical extends of a
model. (which will be discussed in more detail in future tutorials)

Set the Coordinate Grid display

Before digitising the new boundary polygon, it will be helpful to set up a coordinate grid in the
background for a reference. This will give a visual reference of the project coordinates as we
digitise.

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Click on the ‘Display Coordinates’ button on the toolbar to display the ‘Display Coordinates’ form. (The
‘Display Coordinates’ button is shown with the red circle below in Figure 3).
Figure 3. 'Display Coordinates' location on Toolbar

This grid is part of the graphics rendering in both 2D and 3D mode and will be rendered on any
exported image or printing displays.

Click the ‘Show Coordinates’ checkbox and click the ‘Geology Bore’ layer for the extends of the
displayed grid. Accept the default values for the rest of the form. Click the ‘OK’ button to display the
grid in the ‘Graphics Display Area’ and view it in 2D and 3D mode.
Figure 4. Setting Display Coordinates

The extent for the grid can be set manually or according to one of the existing layers to ease
viewing and using coordinate grids. This is also where the intensity of the grid can be changed by
moving the ‘Color’ slider.

To support the digitising of the model boundary it is recommended to set the ‘Display Coordinates’ to
the following (as shown in the red circles in Figure 5 below)

Change the “Z” Step value to ‘100’

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Change the ‘Elevation’ value to “850” so that the grid is displayed above the data in the topographic
layer

Move the ‘Color’ slider to the left (approximately ‘70’) to make the grid colour darker.

It is often useful to change the ‘Min’ numbers for the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ fields to round numbers to
make the grid display values ‘tidier’. For example, the ‘X’ ‘Min’ value could be changed to
“704600” instead of the default “704671.24” and the ‘X’ line increments would then be
“704800”, “704900”, “705000”, “705100 etc.
Figure 5. Changing the Coordinate Grid display

Digitising new data into a layer

The boundary for the groundwater model will be digitised as a polygon boundary into the ‘Model
Boundary’ layer. This polygon boundary will be exported as a shape file to use in Groundwater
Vistas to set the location and extent of the groundwater model.

(This ‘fictitious’ model boundary does not necessarily make sense from a hydrogeological
perspective but rather to demonstrate the process used for this tutorial.)

The digitising process in Vlex4D is done by using the left mouse button to click on locations in the
‘Graphics Display Area’. The system will then capture the X, Y and Z coordinates where the mouse was
clicked into the layer that is being digitised.

The Vlex4D system is fully three dimensional (3D) and provides a few mechanisms for recording
elevation data during digitising.

• It is possible to assign a ‘Normal’ elevation which is “0” for general 2D GIS purposes
• or to set a ‘Constant’ value that will be used for every digitised point.
• The last method is to ‘drape’ a digitised point onto a TIN surface and to record the
elevation value from that surface as the digitised Z coordinate for the layer.

The Professional Version of Vlex4D also allows the ‘draping’ of entire point, polyline or polygon
layers onto a 3D surface or TIN.

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Click the ‘Add Shape’ button on the toolbar (as shown in the red circle in the figure below). Then click
the ‘Assign Constant Z’ radio button and add the value “850” to the text box.
Figure 6. Digitising New Layer Data

Then digitise the ‘model boundary’ similar to the one shown (in blue) in Figure 7 below.

This is done by clicking on the ‘Graphics Display Area’ with the left mouse button once where the
line is to begin followed by left mouse clicks where each point (vertices) of the line should be
located. The polygon can be finished by double clicking with the left mouse button to create the last
point. This should also close the polygon to the first digitised point. Save the project.
Figure 7. Digitise Model Boundary

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Removing previous digitised points (while digitising) is done by holding in the ‘Control’ key (on the
keyboard) and then clicking the right mouse button once. This will make the last digitised point
disappear and digitising can continue as before.

This layer was digitised with an ‘artificial’ elevation of “850m” simply to make sure it displays
above the rest of the tutorial data.

Exporting Layer Data to a Shape File

The ‘Model Outline’ polygon layer will be exported as a Shape File for importing into GW.

Make sure the ‘Model Outline’ layer is selected by clicking once on it with the left mouse button.
The ‘active’ layer is shown in the bottom left corner of the GUI.

Then right click on the ‘Model Outline’ layer to display the same ‘pop-up’ menu as in Figure 2a but
instead click on the ‘Export’ menu item in the ‘pop-up’.

This will display the ‘Export’ form as shown below and then click the ‘ESRI Shape File’ option from
the drop down list.
Figure 8. Export Layer to Shape File

Leave the rest of the form with default values and click on the ‘OK’ button to open a standard
Windows ‘Save As’ form. Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” folder and save it there as
“Model Outline.shp”. (This is the folder created in Tutorial Vistas Setup) in the beginning of this
tutorial.

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 4 Create Basic Groundwater Model

A basic Groundwater Vistas model must be set up first in Groundwater Vistas before
importing the ‘Model Outline’ data for the model orientation. The user is referred to the
installation, licensing, user manuals, tutorials and other sources of information needed for
the Groundwater Vistas system by ESI at http://groundwatermodels.com.

This tutorial assumes that the user of this tutorial complies to all the legal expectations of ESI
(at http://groundwatermodels.com) to use their software.

Setting up a Groundwater Vistas (GWV) model

Open GWV by locating the icon on the desktop or following the menu pathways.

The system will start up and display its GUI. Then click on the ‘New’ button on the top left of the
toolbar (as shown in the red circles below). Then click on the ‘GWVistas Document’ option on the
‘New’ form before clicking on the ‘OK’ button to create a new model.
Figure 9. Create new GWV model

This will display the ‘Initialize Model Grid’ form as shown below:
Figure 10. GWV initial Grid Setup

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Change new model grid values similar to the values marked with red circles in Figure 10 above. This
includes the ‘Horizontal Grid’ (28 Rows, 48 Columns, 60m X spacing, 50m Y spacing), “Vertical Grid”
(Bottom Elevation 500m, Top Elevation 600m), “K” (‘0.5’, ‘0.5’ & ‘0.05’) and “Recharge” (‘0.0001”)
values. The rest of the values can be left as default.

Then click on the ‘OK’ button to create the model which should look similar to the one shown below.
Figure 11. Basic MODFLOW grid

Click on the ‘Save’ button on the toolbar and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Vistas” folder and
save as “GWV Tutorial.gwv” in the “Vistas” folder. The system will also prompt the user to ‘Change
MODFLOW/MODPATH/MT3D root file name” and click on the ‘No’ button.
Figure 12. Save Button in GWV

Importing Model Outline

The ‘Model Outline’ polygon shape file data will be used to set up the geographic location of
the groundwater model in GWV with the same coordinate system and extent, that is used in
this Vlex4D tutorial.

Click on the ‘File’ menu in GWV and then click on the ‘Map’ sub menu before clicking on the ‘Shape
File …” option.

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This will display a standard Windows “File Open” form. Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports”
folder and click on the “Model Outline.shp” file (that was exported from Vlex4D) to select it before
clicking on ‘OK’.

This will automatically display the ‘Output Map File’ form because GWV wants to save a ‘Map’ file
(which is an internal format that GWV uses to display mapsI). Keep the folder the same as the current
“C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” and type in the text “Model Outline” in the ‘File Name’ text box of the
‘Save As’ form before clicking on the ‘OK’ Button.

GWV will then display the “Color Assigned to Mono-color Maps” message box and then select the
“Red” colour from the drop down list before clicking on ‘OK’.

The map in GWV should now look like the following:

Figure 13. GWV with imported Boundary Outline

GWV has now changed the geographic location of the grid to be in the same geographic
location as the tutorial project in Vlex4D.

This can be seen by clicking on the ‘Model’ menu in GWV and clicking again on the ‘Model
Information’ sub menu. This will display the ‘Model Summary’ form with the coordinate
transformation as shown below:
Figure 14. Coordinate transformation in GWV

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Setting ‘No Flow’ boundaries
The same “Model Outline” shape file can now be used to define the ‘No Flow’ boundary conditions
for the model.

Click on the ‘BCs’ menu in GWV and then click on the ‘No Flow’ boundary condition to make it active
for editing (as shown with the red circles in the figure below):
Figure 15. Selecting the 'No Flow' boundary condition

Then click on the ‘BCs’ menu again and click on the ‘Import’ sub menu followed by the ‘Shape file’
option. The GWV system will display a typical Windows “File Open” form. Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial
Vistas\Exports” folder and select the “Model Outline.shp” file. Click on the ‘OK’ button to load the
file.

GWV then displays a form asking “Set NOFLOW cells inside polygons(s)?”.

Click the ‘No’ button and GWV will set the model grid cells that are outside the ‘Model Outline’ polygon
to ‘No Flow’ cells.

Then click ‘Yes’ on the ‘Delete Existing Boundary Conditions’ message and click ‘OK’ on the “No Flow
Polygon Overlap’ form. The ‘No Flow’ boundary condition shown below:
Figure 16. No Flow cells outside 'Model Outline'

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 5 Importing GWV grid to Vlex4D

The GWV system contains the functionality to export the groundwater model grid data in a format
that Vlex4D can use to import and display the grid and the groundwater modelling results.

Exporting groundwater model data from GWV

Click on the ‘Grid’ menu followed by clicking on the ‘Export’ sub menu and then clicking on the ‘Vlex4D
file’ option (as shown in the red circles in Figure 17 below).
Figure 17. Export GWV grid to Vlex4D

The GWV will then display a ‘Save As’ form to save the exported grid file. Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial
Vistas\Data” folder and save the file as “Initial Grid.s3d”.

The system will further prompt the user “Include Inactive Cells in the Export?”. Click on the ‘Yes’ button
and click ‘OK’ again on the next “Vlex4D file exported successfully” message.

The ‘inactive’ cells can be excluded from the export and the Vlex4D system will still import the
grid, but the ‘inactive’ cells will not be displayed Vlex4D.

Then click on the ‘No’ button for the “Create Shape file copy” message.

Importing GWV grid results to Vlex4D

The file “Initial Grid.s3d” with the exported GWV grid data will now be imported into Vlex4D
for display and review.

Open Vlex4D and click on the ‘GW Modelling’ button on the toolbar (as shown in the red circle in the
figure below).

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Figure 18. Import GWV grid file to Vlex4D

The Vlex4D system will display the ‘GW Modelling’ form (as shown in the red circle in Figure 19 below.)
Figure 19. Import GWV Modelling Form

Click on the ‘Import’ button to display the ‘File Open’ form and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial
Vistas\Data” folder where the file “Initial Grid.s3d” is located.

Click on the ‘Open’ button and Vlex4D will open and process the file. Click on the ‘X’ in the top left
of the form to close it.

The ‘Discard Values’ option are available if the model has to be imported without converging
in GWV and some of the ‘Head’ data contains extreme values. (This is usually evident once a
grid has been imported by a few scattered ‘grid cell’ boxes on the screen while the model
cannot be seen). Then the system can be set to exclude these extreme values but still display
the grid in Vlex4D.

Click on the “+” on the left of the “Initial Grid” layer in the layer list on the left to expand the “Initial
Grid” 3D modelling layer to reveal the sub layers underneath it.

The 3D Modelling layers are used for 3D models and could also be used to group other layers
in a group together. Vlex4D automatically groups the layers for a GWV model import into a
group for easier management.

Then click on the ‘Visible’ check box next to the ”GW Modeling #1” sub layer to make it not visible
(as shown with the red circle in Figure 20 below.)

The ”GW Modeling #1” layer contains data about the imported GWV model such as the ‘BC-
Type’, Kx, Ky, Kz, Ss, Sy, Porosity, HSU, CellType as well as the Head and Ddn (if the model has
been run). All of these attributes can now be viewed and compared to the conceptual model
in Vlex4D in a 3D display.

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Figure 20. View Imported Grid

This displays the model grid that was created in GWV in the soft grey colour and by
‘switching’ on the display of the ‘Sandstone_solid’ layer it can be seen that the sandstone
layer fits (mostly) inside the model grid.

Reviewing the Imported GWV Grid

The imported grid contains a lot of data about how the groundwater model was set up. The
next step would be to review the ‘No Flow’ cells in the grid and how that relates to the
drilling and geological data already in Vlex4D.

Double click on the ‘GW Modeling #1’ layer to display the ‘Layer Properties’ form for the ‘GW
Modeling #1’ layer.

Then click on the ‘Z Color Range’ tab and click on the ‘Enable’ checkbox to ‘uncheck’ it (as shown in
the red circle in Figure 21 below). This will make the rest of the ‘Z Color Range’ options change to a
grey colour.

The ‘Z Color Range’ display property takes precedence in VLex4D and has to be ‘switched’ off
first before the other tabs are set.
Figure 21. Uncheck 'Z Color Range'

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Click the ‘Attribute Color Index’ tab and click on the ‘Enable’ checkbox to ‘Enable’ it. Then click on
the ‘Attribute’ drop down list and click on the ‘BC-Type’ option to select it (as shown in red circles on
Figure 22 below).

The Vlex4D system populates the ‘Attribute’ list with the attribute fields that were imported,
and it then populates the grid below the drop down list with the unique values in this
selected attribute field. There are only two types of Boundary Conditions (‘BC-Type’) in the
grid at this stage and they are ‘Active’ and ‘Inactive’ (‘No Flow’) cells. Other ‘BC-Type’s such
as ‘Constant Heads’ and ‘Wells’ will be found in this list (later in this tutorial) once they were
created in GWV and imported to Vlex4D.
Figure 22. Set 'Attribute Color Index'

Double click on the colour box on the right of the ‘Active’ value to display the ‘Colour Picker’ form.
Then click on the ‘yellow’ box to select it (as shown in red circles in Figure 22 below.)

Then click ‘OK’ on the ‘Colour Picker’ to ‘import’ the ‘yellow’ colour to the grid and click on the ‘OK’
button for the ‘Layer Properties’ form to regenerate the display.
Figure 23. Set Colour for BC attribute

Click on the checkbox to the left of the ‘GW Modeling #1’ layer to make it visible.

This renders the groundwater model ‘active’ grid cells in the GWV grid ‘yellow’ and renders the
colour of the model ‘Inactive’ cells ‘black’ (similar to GWV).

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Figure 24. Display 'Active' and 'Inactive' cells

Set the Vlex4D ‘Graphics Display Area’ to ‘3D’ mode and rotate the view while ‘switching on’ the
‘Sandstone_Solid’ layer as well as changing the transparency of the ‘Sandstone_Solid’ layer.

6 Enhancing GWV Model

This part of the tutorial will focus on expanding the GWV model by creating constant head
polylines in Vlex4D and the importing it to GWV to set the constant head cells and then importing
the results back to Vlex4D for visualisation. This will be followed up by the same process for
pumping wells.

Adding new Constant Head boundaries

Create a new polyline layer in Vlex4D called ‘Constant Heads’. This layer will be used to digitise a line
that will be used to import the location and then set the elevation of constant head cells in GWV.

Refer to Create a new Layer to for more details. Set the line width to “1.5” and set the colour of the
line to “Green”. Refer to ‘Tutorial One’ for more details on how to do this.

Digitise two lines similar to the lines shown below in Figure 25 with the line on the left at an ‘Assign
Constant Z’ of “575” for the constant head elevation and the line on the right with ‘Assign Constant
Z’ of “525”.

Refer to Digitising new data into a layer for more detail on how to digitise.

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Figure 25. Digitise new Constant Head boundaries

Export the ‘Constant Heads’ layer in the Shape File format as “Constant Heads.shp” to the
“C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” folder. Refer to Exporting Layer Data to a Shape File for more detailed
information.

Importing Constant Head boundaries to GWV

Open the modelling project file “GWV Tutorial.gwv” in GWV. Click on the ‘BCs’ menu and click on
the ‘Constant Head/Conc’ sub menu to activate the ‘constant head’ editing mode in GWV (as shown
with the red circles in Figure 26 below).
Figure 26. Select Constant Head edit mode

Click the ‘BCs’ menu again and click on the ‘Import’ sub menu and after that click on the ‘Shapefile’
option (as shown in the red circles in Figure 27 below).

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Figure 27. Selecting Shape file import for Constant Heads

This displays the ‘Shapefile to Import’ form.

Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” folder and select the “Constant Heads.shp” file that
were exported from Vlex4D.

GWV displays a message “Does Database Contain Data for Both Ends of Polyline?”. Click on the ‘No’
button and GWV will display the ‘Import Shapefile for Boundary Conditions’ form.

Click on the ‘Constant Head’ drop down list and click on the ‘ZElevation’ field (as shown in red circles
in Figure 28 below).

Vlex4D exports the ‘elevation’ value of the lines that were set with the ‘Assign Constant Z’ of
“575” and “525” to the ‘ZElevation’ attribute field in the exported shape file.
Figure 28. Set Elevation values for Constant Head Import

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Click on the ‘OK’ button and GWV will add the two constant head elevation values of “575” and “525”
from the Shape file to the ‘Constant Head’ cells in the GWV grid.

Save the GWV project and click on the ‘Recalculate’ button on the toolbar to run the model (as shown
in red circles in Figure 29 below).
Figure 29. Run the GWV model with the 'Recalculate' button

Click the ‘Yes’ button on the “Create Datafiles first?” form and click the ‘Yes’ button on the “Display
Error/Warning File?”.

Click on the ‘Yes’ button for the “MODFLOWwin32 is finished! Process the Results?” message.

This will display the ‘Import Model Results’ form and click on the ‘Drawdown File’ and ‘Import’
checkbox to ‘Enable’ it (as shown in a red circle in Figure 30 below).
Figure 30. Import GWV model run results

The results of the model run will be shown in GWV as shown in Figure 31 below.

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Figure 31. Contours of Model Run Results

The GWV GUI displays the grid of the constant head grid cells in blue and the contours of the water
table in faint blue lines with the water table elevations on each contour (depending on how your
GWV display is set up).

Exporting Grid containing Run Results to Vlex4D

The grid with the new constant head cells and the water table results can now be exported to
a Vlex4D format and imported to Vlex4D for visualisation and review.

Click on the ‘Grid’ menu and follow through to the ‘Export’ and ‘Vlex4D file’ sub menus. This will
display the ‘Export Model to Vlex4D’ form and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Data” folder and
save the file as “Grid_CH.s3d”.

Click ‘Yes’ on the “Include Inactive Cells in Export” form followed by clicking ‘Yes’ on the “Include
Model Results in Export?” message.

Click the ‘Yes’ button on the “Vlex4D File Exported Successfully” message and then click ‘No’ on the
“Create a Shapefile Copy of this s3d file?” message.

Importing ‘Grid_CH.s3d’ file to Vlex4D

Open the “Basic Vistas.scp” project in Vlex4D and click on the ‘GWModelling’ button on the toolbar
to display the ‘GWModelling’ form. Click the ‘Import Data’ button and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial
Vistas\Data” folder and select the “Grid_CH.s3d” file before clicking on the ‘Open’ button.

This will import the GWV grid file and display it in the Vlex4D ‘Graphics Display Area’ as shown in
Figure 32 below. Refer to the Importing GWV grid results to Vlex4D section for more details.

The import from GWV now contains the ‘Head’ and ‘Ddn’ (“Drawdown”) data for the model
in the grid. The ‘Head’ data is displayed with a default colour scheme of ‘red’ for the highest
elevations transitioning through the ‘rainbow’ to ‘blue’ for the lowest elevations.

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Figure 32. Results of GWV grid import to Vlex4D

Vlex4D generates a new ‘3D Modelling’ layer called ‘Grid_CH’ and it now contains three sublayers:

• GW Modeling Outline_1 – which is the grid cell outlines

• GW Modeling #1_1 – this is the grid properties for the first layer in the grid
• GW Modeling #1_Head – this is the ‘Head’ values in each grid cell (water table elevations)

Click on the ‘display’ checkbox on the left of the ‘GW Modeling #1_1’ layer to ‘hide’ the layer in the
‘Graphics Display Area’.

A new TIN surface layer will be created from the ‘Heads’ data to display a surface of the water
table for 3D viewing.

Click on the ‘GW Modeling #1_Head’ layer once with the left mouse button to make it the active layer.
Then click on the ‘Create New Tin’ button on the toolbar to display the ‘Create New Surface’ Form.

Then click on the ‘Concave Hull Surface Threshold (m)’ radio button to set it to ‘On’. Click in the
numerical value box just to the right of it and add the number “80” to it (as shown in Figure 33 below
with the red circles).

Click on the ‘OK’ button to create a new Surface of the imported water levels.
Figure 33. Set TIN Surface values for Water Levels

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 The ‘Concave Hull’ option was used to create a ‘tidier’ TIN surface that only spans the ‘active’
cells in the model. The value of “80” was chosen arbitrarily to be slightly bigger than the 60m
size of the model grid cells. If the value is too small or too large the TIN surface can be full of
holes or it can span across the gaps left by the ‘inactive’ (‘No Flow’) cells. This normally takes
a few runs to figure out what the correct size is for a ‘tidy’ TIN surface.

Click on the ‘display’ checkbox on the left of the ‘GW Modeling #1_Head’ layer to ‘hide’ the layer in
the ‘Graphics Display Area’.

This will display the new TIN surface layer ‘GW Modeling #1_Head_rTin’ at the bottom of the layer
list. Click the ‘display’ checkbox for the ‘Sandstone_Solid’ layer to display it. Rotate and view the
results of the surface generation in 3D.

Double click the ‘Sandstone_Solid’ layer to display the ‘Layer Properties’ form and slide the
‘Transparency’ slider in the left direction to the halfway mark. The results are shown in Figure 34
below.
Figure 34. Results of Water Level surface from GWV model

Adding Pumping Wells

Five new pumping wells will be added to the groundwater model by digitising five points into
a point layer and exporting them to GWV into the ‘Wells’ boundary condition.

Right click in the ‘Layer List’ and create a new ‘Point’ layer called “Pumping Wells”. Refer to Create a
new Layer for more details. Save the Vlex4D project.

Editing Attributes for a layer

Right click on the new ‘Pumping Wells’ layer to display the ‘pop-up’ menu and select the ‘Attributes’
sub menu. This will display the ‘Layer Attribute’ form where the attributes of a layer can be managed
and edited. It is still empty as now data has been added to the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer yet.

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Click on the ‘General’ tab in the ‘Layer Attribute’ form to display the ‘Add’ and ‘Modification’ tools for
a layer.

The ‘General’ tab on the ‘Layer Properties’ tab contains several tools to create and edit
attribute fields for a layer. The results from these tools such as the ‘Replace’ or ‘Calculations’
are permanent, and it is advised to make save or backup the project regularly.

Type the text “Pump Rate” into the ‘Name’ text box inside the ‘Add/Modify’ box.

Click on the ‘Data Type’ drop down list and click the ‘Number’ option before clicking on the ‘Add New’
button (as shown in Figure 35 below). Click on the ‘X’ in the top right to close the form. Click on the
‘Save’ button in the toolbar to save the project.
Figure 35. Add new Pump Rate Field to Attribute Layer

This will add a new field called ‘Pump Rate’ to the list of attributes for the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer. Close
the form and save the project.

Left click once on the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer to make sure it is ‘active’ for editing to digitise five new
points in the layer. Click the ‘Add Shape’ tool in the toolbar to display the ‘Add Shape’ form.

Click the ‘Assign constant Z’ radio button to activate it and add the number “650” in the number box
to the right of it.

(The elevation value of “650” will just ensure that the digitised wells are displayed above the
other data in the ‘graphics display area’ to avoid it being hidden under other layers, it will not
be used in the GWV model)

Also add the number “-150” (make sure that it is the negative ‘-‘ sign before the 150) to the ‘Pump
Rate’ cell in the small ‘spreadsheet’ type grid (as shown in Figure 36 below).

The “-150” will be used for the pump rate in GWV.

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Figure 36. Add Pumping Well data

Vlex4D adds a small blue square box underneath the mouse as it is moved across the ‘Graphics
Display Area’as shown in Figure 36 above. This is to show that the system is in ‘digitise’ mode.

Any left click with the mouse will add a new point at that click ‘X’ and ‘Y’ location to the
‘Pumping Wells’ layer with the number of “-150” added to the “Pump Rate Q” attribute field
for this record. The system also adds the number “650” to the ‘Z Coordinate’ for the point.

Click on the left most purple ‘diamond’ location (marked with the red circle and the number “1”) as
shown in Figure 36 above. This will add the map coordinate data to the ‘Add shape’ form and add a
new record to the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer.

Change the ‘Pump Rate’ number in the small ‘spreadsheet’ grid to “-200” before clicking on the second
purple ‘diamond’ shaped icon. Continue with the next three points in the same way and add the
numbers “-162”, “-180” and “-275” before each new point is digitised.

(The data currently in the ‘spreadsheet’ grid is captured to the corresponding layer attribute
field at the same moment a point is clicked)

Click the small ‘X’ on the top right of the ‘Add Shape’ form to close it and save the Vlex4D project.

Double click the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer with the left mouse button to open the ‘Layer Properties’ form.

Change the outline colour to ‘Pink’ and make the ‘Point / Line size’ to “1.5” and change the ‘Angle
(points)’ value to “45” degrees.

Then click on the ‘Display Labels’ checkbox to activate it and click the ‘Label attribute Above’ drop
down list and click on ‘Pump Rate’. Click in the ‘Decimal places’ number box and change it to “0” as
well as click in the ‘Size’ number box and change it to “5” (to change the Font Size) before clicking the
‘OK’ button) as shown in Figure 37 below).

(Just for the purpose of introducing the display properties of a layer)

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Figure 37. Set 'Pumping Wells' display Properties

If something went wrong with the digitising process, then the attributes can still be edited by opening
the ‘Attribute’ editor and manually editing the values (as shown below in Figure 38).
Figure 38. Editing Layer Attributes

This is also the place where the pump rates for the wells can be changed before reimporting
them to GWV. The ‘Calculations’ tool on the ‘General’ tab in the ‘Layer Attributes’ form is
handy as it can be used to multiply the pumping rates of all the wells by a factor to
reduce/increase the overall pumping if there are a lot of wells in the model. Or it could be used
to add/ subtract a constant value to/from all the wells if needed.

Exporting ‘Pumping Rate’ data to GWV

Right click on the ‘Pumping Wells’ layer to display the ‘Export’ form and export it to an ‘ESRI Shape
File’ format to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” folder as “Pumping Wells.shp”.

Open the ‘GWV Tutorial.gwv’ project in GWV and click on the ‘BCs’ menu before clicking the ‘Wells’
sub menu to make ‘Well’ editing active.

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Click on the ‘BCs’ menu and click on the ‘Import’ sub menu before clicking on the ‘Shapefile’ option.
Navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Exports” folder and select the “Pumping Wells.shp” file before
clicking on the ‘Open’ button to display the ‘Import Shapefile for Boundary Conditions’ form.

Click on the ‘Well Q’ drop down list and click on the ‘Pump Rate’ field. Click on the ‘OK’ button to
import the data.

This should display the wells as red dots in the GWV GUI as shown in Figure 39 below. Double click on
any of the red cells to verify that the pumping rates were imported as expected.

Save the GWV project and click on the ‘Recalculate’ button on the toolbar to run the model. Click the
‘Yes’ button on the “Create Datafiles first?” form and click the ‘Yes’ button on the “Display
Error/Warning File?”.

Click on the ‘Yes’ button for the “MODFLOWwin32 is finished! Process the Results?” form. This will
display the “Import Model Results’ form and click on the ‘Drawdown File’ and ‘Import’ checkbox to
‘Enable’ it.

This will display the model result similar as to what is shown below in Figure 39.
Figure 39. Display results from 'Pumping Wells' model run

The blue contour lines indicate that the pumping wells removed enough water from the
model to start creating drawdown around the wells.

Importing ‘Pumping Well’ model run to Vlex4D

The results from the GWV model run with the new pumping wells will be exported to Vlex4D.

Click on the ‘Grid’ menu and follow through to the ‘Export’ and ‘Vlex4D file’ sub menus. This will
display the ‘Export Model to Vlex4D’ form and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial Vistas\Data” folder and
save the file as “Dewater Model.s3d”.

Click ‘Yes’ on the “Include Inactive Cells in Export” form followed by clicking ‘Yes’ on the “Include
Model Results in Export?” form. Click the ‘Yes’ button on the “Vlex4D File Exported Successfully” form
and then click ‘No’ on the “Create a Shapefile Copy of this s3d file?” message.

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Open the ‘Basic Vistas.scp’ project in Vlex4D and click on the ‘GWModelling’ button on the toolbar to
display the ‘GWModelling’ form. Click the ‘Import Data’ button and navigate to the “C:\Tutorial
Vistas\Data” folder and select the “Dewater Model.s3d” file before clicking on the ‘Open’ button. This
will import the GWV grid file and display it in the Vlex4D ‘Graphics Display Area’.

Vlex4D generates a new ‘3D Modelling’ layer called ‘Dewater Model’ with three sublayers:

• GW Modeling Outline_2 – which is the grid cell outlines

• GW Modeling #1_2 – this is the grid properties for the first layer in the grid
• GW Modeling #1_Head_1” – this is the ‘Head’ values in each grid cell (water table elevations)

Click on the ‘display’ checkbox on the left of the ‘GW Modeling #1_2’ layer to ‘hide’ the layer in the
‘Graphics Display Area’. Click on the ‘GW Modeling #1_Head_1’ layer once with the left mouse button
to make it the ‘active’ layer. Then click on the ‘Create New Tin’ button on the toolbar to display the
‘Create New Surface’ Form.

Then click on the ‘Concave Hull Surface Threshold (m)’ radio button to set it to ‘On’. Click in the
numerical value box just to the right of it and add the number “80” to it. Click the ‘OK’ button to create
the new surface of the modelled groundwater levels.

Click on the ‘display’ checkbox on the left of the ‘GW Modeling #1_Head’ layer to ‘hide’ the layer in
the ‘Graphics Display Area’. This will display the new TIN surface layer ‘GW Modeling #1_Head_1_rTin’
at the bottom of the layer list as shown in Figure 40 below.
Figure 40. Display of GWV model results with dewatering wells

Change the display of the previous water table surfaces to ‘On’ or ‘Off’ and rotate in 3D as well as
changing the ‘Z-Scale All’ value of all the layers to “3” to see the difference.

Reviewing ‘BC-Type’ values in GWV grid

The ‘GW Modeling #1_2’ layer contains all the boundary conditions in the GWV model. Double click
the ‘GW Modeling #1_2’ layer to display the ‘Layer Properties’ form. Disable the ‘Z Color Range’
checkbox and click on the ‘Attribute Color Index’ tab.

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Check the ‘Enable’ checkbox on the ‘Attribute Color Index’ tab and select the ‘BC-Type’ attribute field
from the ‘Attribute’ drop down list.

This will display the four boundary conditions (Active, Inactive (No Flow), CH (Constant
Heads) and Wells) that was imported from the GWV model.

Assign the following colours to the boundaries: Active = ‘yellow’, Inactive = ‘black’, CH = ‘blue’ and
Wells = ‘red’) as shown in Figure 41 below:

The ‘GW Modeling #1_2’ layer also contains valuable other information about the GWV
model such as the node numbers or the ‘drawdown’ (Ddn) that occurred in the layer when it
was run in GWV.

Double click the ‘GW Modeling #1_2’ layer to display the ‘Layer Properties’ dialog. Click the ‘Display
Labels’ checkbox to make it active and click on the ‘Label Attribute Above’ drop down.

Click on ‘Ddn’ at the bottom of the list and set the ‘Decimal Places’ “0” to the right of it. The results
are shown in Figure 41 below (with the bore layer ‘switched’ off.
Figure 41. Model Boundary Colours with ‘Ddn’ values

Zoom in and rotate the layer to review the drawdown values in the imported model.

The original elevation of the water table was set as ‘top of layer’ which is 600m and the
constant head elevation was set at 575m on the left and 525m on the right. The most
drawdown occurred to the right-hand side of the model. Note the additional drawdown
close to the pumping wells.

Refinement of Grid with MODFLOW USG

The GWV project was refined with a Quadtree refinement based on a fictitious geological fault striking
from east to west. The fault material was assigned Hydraulic Conductivity (Kx, Ky and Kz) values of
“10,10,1” respectively and the pumping wells were moved slightly to be in the fault zone.

The model was rerun with the new refined configuration and it is shown below:

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Figure 42. Refined GWV model as displayed in GWV

This refinement process is outside of this tutorial and will be explored in more depth in a
future tutorial. The GWV model is available in the ‘Vistas’ folder as ‘GWV Tutorial
Enhanced.gwv’.

The refined model is shown in Figure 43 below:

Figure 43. Refined GWV model as displayed in Vlex4D

The refined model can be imported from the “Dewater Refined.s3d” file in the “Data” folder.

TIN surfaces were created for the top and bottom elevations of the ‘Sandstone_Solid’ layer with the
Vlex4D Professional version of the software. These were imported to GWV and the top and bottom
elevations of the model was based on these TIN surfaces. This can be seen in Figure 44 below.

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Figure 44. Refined GWV model represented in Vlex4D

The Vlex4D system can display refined MODFLOW USG grids in the Nested and Quadtree formats. It
cannot display Voronoi grids yet, but it is on the system expansion and development list.

7 Tutorial Conclusion
The overall focus and purpose of Vlex4D is to be able to display and interpret a variety of geoscience
data that the user may encounter for visualisation and interpretation purposes.

Then it is easy to export this conceptual understanding of the data to a groundwater modelling system
such as Groundwater Vistas.

The results from the modelling exercise in Groundwater Vistas can then be imported back into Vlex4D
easily for reviewing and matching in 3D, to the conceptual data.

Any comments or suggestions towards this tutorial can be sent to ian@gdms.com.au

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