Trevor English
Samer Muhandes
It’s almost that time of the year where we start singing “I’m dreaming of… land use and soil type polygons.” If that wasn’t how you thought the song went, then you may not be a drainage designer.
When it comes to hydraulic modeling, our goal is always to model our networks and systems as accurately and as close to reality as we can. With the latest release of InfoDrainage 2025.4, your catchment modeling just got even faster and more accurate thanks to Land Use and Soil Type polygons.
This feature allows you to incorporate detailed polygon attributes in your sub-catchment based on land use and soil type to further refine your model’s hydrological calculations. In turn, you’re also able to automatically calculate SCS Composite Curve Number, runoff coefficients, Percentage Impervious area, and Laurenson Method Degree of Urbanization. Let’s explore this feature in greater detail.
Land Use and Soil Type polygons
We’ve rolled out Land Use and Soil Type Polygons as a tech preview, introducing enhanced sub-catchment modeling capabilities through Land Use and Soil Type polygons. This feature allows you to incorporate detailed polygon attributes to refine hydrological calculations for each sub-catchment, providing a more accurate and spatially informed approach to drainage design. In short, your catchments and sub-catchments just got even more accurate and data-rich, allowing further refinement of your models and results.
Take a look at how this works:
With this update, land use polygons come with specific attributes that reflect different surface and environmental conditions. Each land use polygon can include:
- Land Use (eg, urban areas)
- Cover Type (eg, open space)
- Condition (eg, poor)
- Volumetric Runoff Coefficient (eg, C = 0.84)
- Percentage of Impervious Area (eg, 80%)
Soil type polygons, in turn, incorporate Soil Group values as an attribute (eg, Soil Type A).
So, what do all of these polygons actually do? They provide essential data that dynamically inform key hydrological parameters, such as the SCS Curve Number, Percentage Impervious, Volumetric Runoff Coefficient, and Laurenson Method Degree of Urbanization. Through the composite and weighted average calculations that these new polygons allow for, your sites can be more accurate and detailed in their representation of mixed land use and varied soil properties across sub-catchments.
Read the release notes and update
This latest release underscores our commitment to continually refining InfoDrainage, integrating best-in-class capabilities to ensure you have the tools you need to produce outstanding drainage system designs. Ready to update?
- You can update InfoDrainage via the Autodesk Access app, or, if you utilize a Thales License, from our legacy support site.
- Go deeper into this release with our product release notes.
- Stay up to date on what’s coming next with our high-level Water Solutions Product Roadmap.
- Need help getting started? Explore our InfoDrainage free learning series.
Don’t have a copy of the software? We offer a 30-day free trial.