There is a well-known fable about a wood cutter who was hired by a timber merchant to cut down trees. This well sought-after job paid well and had excellent working conditions. The wood cutter wanted to succeed in his new job so the first day he worked hard and cut down 18 trees. Determined to do even better on the second day, the wood cutter tried harder but only cut down 15 trees. Day after day the wood cutter tried harder and harder but cut down fewer and fewer trees. Eventually, his boss came to him and told him that he was fired. The wood cutter was upset but knew he had worked as hard as he could so he reluctantly returned his axe.
The boss took one look at the axe and asked ‘When was the last time you sharpened your axe?’ The wood cutter replied ‘Sharpen my axe? I’ve been too busy cutting down trees.
Moral of the story – don’t be too busy to keep your tools and skills sharp.
Keeping in line with this life lesson, the development team at Waterloo Hydrogeologic has been working steadily to make improvements and enhancements to Visual MODFLOW Flex. With your feedback and suggestions, we have been essentially “sharpening” Visual MODFLOW Flex so that you can work faster, be more productive and build better models. What are these improvements? Let me tell you –
- Improved Usability –new options for assigning properties, boundary conditions and inactive cells; updated navigation and layout
- Enhanced Pumping Well Management – improved data entry, editing and viewing by defining wells on a per-screen level
- Flexible Handling of Time-related Data – using relative times to view, import and edit well data
- Enhanced Simulation Capabilities – using MODFLOW-NWT
The focus of this next release has been to make modeling easier for you by providing more options and flexibility when assigning parameters and boundaries but also updating the interface to make it easier to navigate within the software – effectively sharpening your axe!