Deliniating Drainage Areas

[KellyHanne1]

Hello.  I have a question that may seem easy to some of you, but I am stumped and need your help. 

I had a conversation with a co-worker this afternoon about a project we are working on where they need drainage areas.  I have
3 meter DEMs that cover the desired area and was wondering if there was a way to use these DEMs to develop a shapefile consisting of said drainage areas. 

I'm guessing I need to convert to flow direction rasters?  If so, what is the next step after that?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

[MarkBoucher]

The Spatial Analyst Hydrology tools can do this. Also, there is a more  complicated set of tools called Arc Hydro. You must have Spatial Analyst  for both options.

The link below my signature has information about Arc Hydro. You have to  download it (free) from the ESRI ftp site. Then in stall it ... and go  through a learning curve ...

[MarkBoucher]

I ran through the SA Hydrology tools to create one simple watershed and documented it. I created a model builder model also. See attached documentation.

If you have bridge crossings and culverts or other structures that "block" the streams/rivers/creeks. You will need to "burn" in the "streams" on the dem. I documented this here: http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/99125-Water-drop-trace?p=352529&viewfull=1#post352529