The native non-Graphical User Interface (GUI) form of TUFLOW uses Geographic Information System (GIS) files for its spatial inputs. TUFLOW requires specific GIS file formats associated with specific TUFLOW commands. For example, the 1d_nwk_empty file associated with the Read GIS Network command requires the following data fields:
Because of this format requirement, the first task in any modelling project requires the writing of template (empty) GIS files (as demonstrated in Tutorial Module 1). This page of the TUFLOW Wiki provides a reference list of the template (empty) GIS files, the associated TUFLOW command and a basic description of their function.