Hi everybody,
I'm trying to build synthetic drainage lines as coincident as possible with the "real world" shown in the cartography. I think that is a basic purpose of everyone performing hydrological analysis of natural areas, right?
1st I used ArcGIS without the help of ArcHydro and the results were simply unacceptable! (My area has a complicated topography, with many lakes, large and flat valleys, etc.)
Then I used ArcHydro to recondition the DEM and also to adjust flow direction in lakes. The results were much better! But I still have problems. For example, it gives me 3 parallel drainage lines where I had burnt the only existing one with the reconditioning function. I wish I could erase the two obvious wrong lines, but even if that was possible, it would take me weeks or months to "clean" all the study area (of about 10,000 km2).
So, now I'm trying to use "Flow Direction with Streams" instead of "Stream Definition", as the help file stays it's possible; but it seems impossible! The "Flow Dir with Streams" simply doesn't work and many people in the forum, from 2009 to 2012, have mentioned the same hermetic error messages (only software engineers and other experts would understand such messages; I'm just a water resources engineer). None of those people got answers. The forum is a good idea, but not powerful enough to help in many cases. I wish the ESRI technical staff who designed so many specialised functions had written more comprehensive description of their use in the help files.
What could I do to have a synthetic drainage network closer to the real world, so that I can work with it to perform the sound hydrological analysis I need?
I'D APPRECIATE ANY SUGGESTION (EVEN FROM THOSE IN SAME HOPELESS SITUATION, MAYBE ONLY A FEW STEPS AHEAD OF ME). THANKS!
