Budget Pane

The Budget pane of the MODFLOW Output Control dialog box is used to control how the budget terms are printed or saved. There are two types of budget data controlled here. There is an overall summary budget which is printed in the listing file and there are budget terms for individual cells. These may be either printed in the listing file or saved in an external binary file. If they are printed in the listing file, however, only some budget terms are printed. The budget terms for flow between cells, for example, are not printed in the listing file.

The Compact budget option is usually selected. It allows the budget terms for individual cells to be saved in a more compact format and also allows auxiliary data used by MODPATH to be saved. This option may be turned off if the budget file is to be used by an older program that does not know how to read the compact budget format.

Togther Frequency and N control when heads, drawdowns, or budget terms will be saved. For Frequency there are two choices

•First N times steps and each N'th time step thereafter

(The head, drawdown, or budget term for the last time step in the stress period is also printed or saved.)

•Last time step of each N'th stress period

(The head, drawdown, or budget term for the last stress period is also printed or saved.)

The first choice is the default for Frequency. The default for N is 1. If the defaults are used, the head, drawdown, or budget term will be printed or saved at the end of every time step. If the output files become very large, it may be convenient to change either Frequency or N or both. Typically, head, drawdown, and the budget will change most rapidly during the first few time steps of a stress period. Therefore ModelMuse is designed so that if data is being printed or saved for every stress period, it will always be printed or saved for the first N time steps so that these crucial time steps can be checked.

The Save cell flows option is used to control where the budget terms for individual cells are printed or saved. (The only place the summary budget can be printed is in the listing file.) The budget terms written to the listing file include the flows at boundary condition cells but not flows between active cells. The budget terms saved to binary file files include all flows including flows between active cells.

Save budget summary flow rates to a separate file (WBGT in MODFLOW-OWHM). MODFLOW-OWHM has an option to save the rate terms of the budget summary to a text file. If this option is activated, the flow rates will be saved to a file with the extension ."wbgt."