problem when running HEC-1 in WMS while working in the "My Documents" directory

[Todd Wood]

Some users have run into problems when trying to run HEC-1 in WMS while working in the "My Documents" folder. One WMS user's experience is paraphrased below:

"I am unable to run the HEC-1 model in WMS. It keeps showing me messages. Sometimes it can not find the input file which I assume is automatically created for the watershed using the same name as the WMS project file. But it creates it as "untitled". Even when this is the case it gives a message that it can not open this file. The extension on this HEC-1 input file is *.hc1 which is in the working directory. If I open such a file manually and then try to run simulation it gives another error message saying that the output file and solution file can not have the same name as the input file.

I would expect that the input file would be automatically picked up the output file would be saved under the same name.

I found that the cause of this problem (not being able to run HEC-1 in WMS) had to do with the working directory. The "My Documents" folder is problematic for WMS. To fix the problem, I copied my project folder into my root directory (C:) and then it worked OK. Looks like this problem is similar to the one ARC-VIEW had for a long time till ARC-GIS came along. Just thought I will share this with you. In Windows we often work out of the My Document folder."