ModeBuilder has the ability to import Collection and Curve data, such as pump curves, hydrographs, and IDF curves, among others. In the model, these data types are always associated to either Domain elements (pumps, pipes, ...) or Components (pump definitions, hydrographs, ...). You can just import the collection data, and ModelBuilder will create a default domain/component element if it doesn't yet exist, and if the creation option to automatically create referenced elements is enabled. But a better technique would be to import the domain/component element from an external table, and then import the collection data into those created domain/component elements. This gives you the ability to import the most amount of detail.

The external tabular data for a collection curve must have a label field, where the label field contains string values that match the label of the associated domain/component element. For example, if two pattern curves are defined in an external table, the table would look something like the following:

Sample Tabular Data

This would assign 4 entries to the 'Normal' pattern, and 3 entries to the 'High' pattern. The Order field is optional, and is discussed below. The same approach applies to nodes, for such things as a variable area tank curve, or junction demands. In these cases, the label field would contain the name of the node that collection entries are being added into.

ModelBuilder also includes an advanced feature to allow precise ordering of the collection records. For some collections, the order of the records does not matter and this feature isn't needed. For other cases, order of the records is meaningful. For these types of collections, there is a Sort By Field in the ModelBuilder mapping form. By default, it uses the record order as the records exist in the external data source. If the records are not ordered correctly in the data source, then the external table must have an additional field that contains numeric values. These values will represent the order that the records should be imported. So for the above example data, normally the records would be imported in the order entered (5, 19, then 12 for the High pattern). However the user can set the Sort By Field in the ModelBuilder form to use the 'Order' external field, and this will import the records based on either Ascending 'Order' values (5, 12, 19) or Descending 'Order' values (19, 12, 5).