Groundwater modeling with GMS - Groundwater Modeling System - sophisticated groundwater modeling environment

Groundwater modeling with GMS - Groundwater Modeling System - sophisticated groundwater modeling environment

Fill Cells Display Option

The Fill Cells display option is unique to the 3D Grid module. This option is turned on via the 3D Grid Display Options dialog. The fill cell option is only available for cell-centered grids and the viewing mode must be set to Ortho Mode. If this option is on, each cell is filled with a solid color. There are two basic options for determining the color to fill the cells: Data Colors and Material Colors.

Data Colors

If the Data Colors option is selected for Fill Cells, the color used to fill each cell comes from a data array. If the Data Colors option is selected, the Options button to the right of the Fill Cells option brings up the Fill Cells Options dialog. There are two main sets of options in the dialog: Data and Ranges.

Data

The data section on the left side of the dialog is used to select the source data for the cell filling option. The default array used to fill cells is the active data set. An example of a grid with cells filled using the active data set is shown below. Filling the cells using the active data set is an alternative to using color-filled contours. With color-fill contours, the boundaries between the color ranges are drawn at the exact locations (rather than following the cell boundaries) resulting in a more accurate plot. However, the fill cell option is much faster than displaying color-filled contours and is especially useful for large grids.

Another option for filling cells using the data colors option is to use an input array from MODFLOW, MODPATH, MT3DMS, SEAM3D, or RT3D. Any of the input arrays from the models such as Kh, Kv, Recharge, etc. can be displayed. A sample plot of a MODFLOW Kh array is shown below. If the data array contains only a few unique values, GMS automatically sets the data colors to match these unique values. This display option is particularly useful for displaying input arrays that have been assigned using polygons from the conceptual model

Note that it is possible to display both filled cells and contours at the same time. This makes it possible to plot head contours on top of a plot of K zones or recharge zones. This can be a useful way to illustrate the effect of the zonation on the model solution.

Ranges

The options on the right side of the dialog are used to define the ranges of colors used in the Fill Cells display option. The default option is to let GMS automatically select a set of color ranges where the numbers defining the boundaries between the ranges match whole numbers. These ranges can also be set manually.

Material Colors

The other color option for filling cells is called Material Colors. If this option is selected, the color assigned to each cell is based on the material assigned to the cell. This option is especially useful for displaying stratigraphic layering for a multi-layer model in cross-section view as shown below:

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