Running ArcHydro Tools on a Windows 7 64-bit computer

[AlvaroFonseca]

Hello everyone

I need to use ArcHydro on a big railway project covering an area of 50 x 20 km. My experience tells me that I would need to split my terrain model in small pieces, in order to get the hydro calculations to work. I want to avoid that, and instead find a way to run the whole raster extent. I have only tried with Windows XP 32-bit system.

Therefore I am looking for alternative options to run ArcHydro, and thought about installing it on a 64-bit computer with Windows 7. I use ArcGIS Desktop 10. Questions:

- Can ArcHydro run on a 64-bit Windows 7 computer? Are there any special requirements?
- What are the advantages/disadvantages of running ArcHydro on such a computer?
- Any comments on previous or similar experiences are gratefully welcomed.
- Could there be any conflicts with CAD programs, like MicroStation for example?

Finally, here are the specifications of the computer I am considering:

Base Unit HP Z600 RDIMM Workstation
Chassis HP Z600 650W 85% Efficient Chassis
Operating System  MS Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OS
Processor Intel Xeon X5650 2.66 12MB/1333 6C CPU-1
Processor 2 Intel Xeon X5650 2.66 12MB/1333 6C CPU-2
System Memory HP 16GB(4x4GB) DDR3-1333 ECC 2CPU RegRAM
Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB Graphics
Hard Drive 1 HP 250GB SATA 7200 1st HDD
Keyboard HP USB Standard Keyboard
Mouse HP USB Optical Scroll Mouse
Floppy Disk Drive HP No Floppy Disk Option
Optical Device 1 HP 16X DVD+-RW SuperMulti SATA 1st Drive
Country Kit HP Z600 Localization Kit
HP Care Pack Services - CTO/BTCO only (AV) HP 3y NBD/Disk Retention WS Only SVC
Workstations LS Std delivery (Door/Dock) AV workstation

Thanks a lot!!!
Alvaro

[V_StuartFoote]

Alvaro,

Running ArcHydro 2.x in ArcGIS Desktop 10 on 64-bit Windows 7 will work well.  The 64-bit memory space and sufficient memory will likely hold your model (depending on resolution of you DTM), but ArcMap and ArcHydro remain 32-bit single threaded programs.  Beyond improvements in memory management you'll be limited to a single processing thread.

The hard drive is a little slow--overall through put would benefit from an SSD.

And while you would be able to run multiple instances of ArcMap/ArcHydro--you would still probably need to partition your data into multiple FGDB to avoid contention and lock conditions during processing to increase ArcGIS ArcHydro throughput as multiple threads.

You should have no issues with other applications.

Stuart

[AlvaroFonseca]

Hello Stuart

Thanks a lot for your answer. It clearly helps to understand the situation. I will try to get an SSD hard drive instead. However, my knowledge on these issues is limited, and I could use some references. Do you have some links, papers, documents, regarding the issue of:

- "partitioning my data into multiple FGDB to avoid concentration and lock conditions"

- How would this partitioning cause my ArcGIS and ArcHydro processes or results to run as multiple threads? I mean, by partitioning I understand splitting my input data into several file geodatabases, right?

Again, thanks a lot for the quick answer. Hope you have some extra material I can digest 🙂

Kind regards,
Alvaro