HEC-HMS: large .DSS file

[froude]

HEC-HMS (using ver. 3.2) creates a .dss file that is usually quite large (77 MB). If you try to send a HEC-HMS model to somebody electronically, it seems that you have to send this large dss file also, as it contains important data.

Does anybody know a way to reduce the size of this .dss file?

Or a better question may be, am I even on the right track here?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[cvg]

version 3.3 - I have an approximately 30 square mile drainage area with approximately 40 sub-basins and the dss file is just over 3 MB. Why is yours so large?

 

[froude]

I'm wondering the same thing! I'm going to try to play with it to see what's going on...

 

[Drew08]

Every time you run the model the flow, stage, total rainfall, excess rainfall, and every other kind of time series for every element is saved to the DSS file. If you change or add an element or change the run name, a separate set of time series is created and the old ones are not deleted. So, the more you run, the more you change the model, the more name changes you make, and the longer the model runs the larger the DSS file will grow.

The size of the DSS file can be controlled using HEC-DSSVue. Open the DSS file with HEC-DSSVue and delete all the outdated records. Then "squeeze" the file to permanently remove the deleted data to decrease the file size. Just be careful not to delete the paired data, or input time series data used to execute the model.

The initial size of the DSS, without any results, is really independent of the number of basins. No basin data is stored in the DSS file. Only time series and paired data are stored in the DSS.

http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-dss/hecdssvue-dssvue.htm