For Design work, the spreadsheet outputs in DRAINS serve as documentation for the design of piped drainage systems. These show the input data that define the system, and results of minor and major storm runs used to design or check a pipe system.
One of the main uses of DRAINS is the analysis of existing drainage systems, checking on inadequate components and developing solutions. This requires a report showing plans of the systems, results of analyses, possible remedial works and their effects, cost estimates, assessments, comments and recommendations. Reports of this kind can be developed using Office programs. Results from DRAINS can be easily transferred into documents such as Word, and (optionally) into GIS programs.
They can also be copied to a spreadsheet program such as Excel using options in the Edit menu via the Windows clipboard. The spreadsheet program can be used to manipulate, compare and graphed system data, hydrographs and pit or node hydraulic grade line levels. Results can be put into a form similar to ARR 1987 tabular outputs using the spreadsheet named 'DRAINS Output Converter.xls'. This will be expanded to process outputs from IL-CL models.