Gas Tracing

Esri Utility Network Management Extension – Placing and Tracing Gas Features

January 7, 2018 — Corey Blakeborough

We have previously showcased the details of Utility Network Management for gas data, and editing with gas distribution data using Esri’s Utility Network Management Extension. Today, we’re refreshing you on how the utility network handles feature placement and tracing, specific to gas features. I’ll be using a group edit template to create some features, and then dive more into the gas tracing capabilities of the Utility Network to verify the connectivity of my placed features. We’ve already talked about electric editing in the past, and today, I’ll show off how some of this new functionality works with gas networks.

An important note here: to showcase this functionality, we’re not using any customizations, but handling this work with SSP Productivity would have cut our time down significantly.

Creating Features with a Group Edit Template in ArcGIS Pro

Let’s say that I want to place a gas service line, in addition to some features associated with it, like its tapping tee, excess flow valve, and meter set. We can do this with ArcGIS Pro’s group templates, as well. I’ll be using a group edit template that has been configured by an administrator in order to minimize clicks when placing this common set of features.

I’ve already switched to a new version and ensured that snapping is turned on.

We can select the “Plastic PE Service Line with Single Meter Set” group template:

We’ll click and snap to the gas main line, right-click on it (or press E) to ensure our line is perpendicular, and click out two times to have a vertex in our line.

With that, our service line is created. A tee has been placed at its intersection with the gas main, the valve has been placed at the vertex, and a meter set has been placed at the end of the service line. How efficient!

You can also see purple polygons around the features we’ve created, representing “dirty areas.” As a reminder, we always want to validate new and edited features in order to verify that they comply with the rules you specified for the utility network. Once we do, assuming there are no rule violations, our subnetwork for the gas pressure system in question can be updated to reflect our newly-added features.

Running Utility Network Gas Traces in ArcGIS Pro

As this exercise is intended to show the Utility Network Management Extension at its core, we’re not using SSP Productivity, but one of its features really shines in this section. At the core of Utility Network’s traces are geoprocessing tools. For most tasks, we can access tracing geoprocessing tools and set the parameters in a way that reflects the gas traces that we need. However, much like our electric tracing example, SSP Productivity simplifies this process by performing common traces in just a few simple clicks. Since this isn’t the case in our example today, we’ll set our trace location to our newly-placed meter to get started.

Next, we’ll open the Upstream Trace geoprocessing tool and fill out the parameters manually, clicking “Run” when ready.

Some of these parameters allow structures and/or containers to be included in the trace. When these options are checked, the trace checks for structural attachment associations and containment associations, and returns any associated objects with the rest of the trace results.

Are you looking to reach the Utility Network? Feel free to follow our checklist or go in depth with SSP Sync to get there.

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