Converting Mike Urban network (shapefiles) to EPAnet network

Question

I have a model in Mike Urban, and the client wants it in EPAnet format (since the rest of their models are in EPAnet). The network representation is not very similar. MU uses shapefiles and EPAnet, from what I understand, uses (at least) three different tables in text file format. One for node ID's and Z coordinates, one for node ID's and coordinates and one for link ID's and their corresponding breakpoint coordinates. There's some more stuff in each of these tables, but lets not worry about that for now.

Is there a tool, of any kind, that converts shapefile networks (from MU) to EPAnet style networks?

If not, what could be an efficient way of extracting necessary information from the shapefile?

I have no problem extracting xyz coordinates for points (eg. nodes), but how can I get the breakpoints for lines into a text file/other table?

Since there will be a lot of pipes, Python solutions are preferred.

Answer 1

The plugin GHydraulics for QGIS 1.8 will go from a shapefile (or any vector that QGIS supports) to an EPANET .inp file. However it does have a few bugs and can be difficult to use.

WaterGEMS and WaterCAD can import and export EPANET files, as well as shapefiles and some other data formats, but they require licenses, unlike GHydraulics.