In HEC-RTS, a watershed is a set of data, information, models, and images that represent watershed lands and the channels, gages, and water control features within the watershed. A user may open an existing watershed from any of the modules. (If the user needs to create a new watershed, refer to Creating a Watershed.) There are two methods available to open a watershed. First, if the user has opened the watershed before, the user can select the watershed from the File menu, point to Recent Watersheds, and click on the watershed name. The second way to open a watershed follows:

  1. From the HEC-RTS main window (Figure 1), from the File menu, click Open Watershed, the Open Watershed dialog will open (Figure 2).Figure 1 HEC-RTS Main Window
    Figure 2 Open Watershed Dialog
  2. From the Available Watersheds box, select the watershed, click OK. The Open Watershed dialog will close (Figure 2), and the watershed will display in the HEC-RTS main window (Figure 1) 

There can only be one watershed open at a time. Therefore, if a watershed is open and an attempt is made to open another watershed, HEC-RTS will close the initially opened watershed. HEC-RTS first prompts the user to save the watershed.