The HEC-RAS HDF5 Output File may be explored by reading the file with a computer language (e.g. MATLAB or Python) or by opening it with an external HDF5 utility such as HDFView (https://www.hdfgroup.org/downloads/hdfview/) or Panoply (https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/). The HEC-RAS output is grouped in the HDF5 file into Output Blocks. There are several output blocks including Base Output, Computation Block, DSS Hydrograph Output, DSS Profile Output, among others. HEC-RAS 2D sediment output is separated into two Output Blocks: Sediment Transport and Sediment Bed. The path of the Output Blocks within the HDF5 file is /Results/Unsteady/Output/Output Blocks/. The name of each output dataset follows a specific convention as <Location> <Variable Name> for variables which are not specific to each grain class and <Location> <Variable Name> – <Grain Class Name> for variables which are output for each grain class. For all the output variables, the rows indicate the output times and the columns indicate the variation location (i.e. cell, face, subcell, or subface).
Sample code written against the HEC-RAS HDF5 results can be found here.