EPANET.com – what is it?
Have you noticed the new web site EPANET.com? This new site states that it is:
Your one-stop source for software technology, news, and collaboration for the municipal water distribution modeling industry.
The site brings industry headlines, EPANet files download, few white papers, one book for sale and a registration form for a forum.
In the footer of the web page it is said that:
EPANET.com is not affiliated with or managed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency or any other governmental agency
So who is behind this web site?
Looking at the one book offered, “Advanced Water Distribution Modeling and Management “, the software link to “WaterCAD V8 XM“, the registration option to “WaterTalk” and the authors of the withe papers, it is clear that Haestad Methods (currently Bentley) is behind the site.
To make sure I have checked the domain registry for the owner of the epanet.com domain. Up until about a month ago the domain was registered under the name of Bentley. At this time the owner of the domain is hidden. I suspect that the owner did not change – but I could be wrong.
I have nothing against Bentley opening a site at EPANET.com but it would be only fair that they will disclose this fact.
Wow! – they are giving away watercad!
Whoever is doing this, THANK YOU! 🙂
They are giving a 10-pipe version.
watercad v8
I agree that if Bentley is behind the EPANET.COM website they should let that information be known. As a user of WaterCad for the past year (since that’s what my boss has”, I joined the WaterTalk forum, and noticed a LOT of questions about EPANET (which I used in college). MANY of the responses to inquiries about EPANET involve a sales pitch to “upgrade” to WaterCad, touting the benefits of the Skelebrator, Darwin Calibrator, or HAMMER (Transient Analysis), all of which are expensive add-ons to an overpriced and poorly supported software package that is basically little more than EPANET. The documentation for WaterCAd sux, and the support for anything other than program installation is non-existent. (As is the documentation and support for MicroStation and Geopak, but that’s for another forum). Basically, since EPANET is not officially supported by anyone, Bentley decided to offer a little “support” in the form of a single website that offers downloads of already free software and an on-line forum that they could usurp for their own sales pitches. Not illegal, but certainly not on the up-and-up.
There was one instance when http://www.epanet.com was caught by my antivirus software trying to redirect to some other page containing malicious contet
where i get software water distribution EPANET.
i want to download this software.
Download EPANet from here:
http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/wswrd/dw/epanet.html