The out-of-the-box (“OOTB”) Schneider Electric Fiber Manager™ model contains a lonely feature class named FiberFault.  It is lonely because it typically is not invited to the Fiber Geometric Network “Country Club” (See Associated Link #1).  It is my opinion that this feature class can provide an important function to the OOTB maintenance of a telecommunication system.

This feature class can be used to geographically document the specific location of problems/issues with telecommunication features contained within the Geometric Network.  Because it is not invited to the club, it can violate the rules associated with that club (chiefly being junction features with the same coordinates).  A user can place a fault directly on a splice or piece of equipment, if desired.

The sample Minerville Fiber Stored Display has this layer symbolized as a red “X”.  The symbology can be altered to include the specific nature of the fault.  If utilizing the OOTB model, there is a text field titled “FaultCause”.  This field is locked to the domain “Fiber Fault Cause”. 

The domain has some typical values of:

• Storm
• Vehicle
• Animal

Some of my Fiber Manager™ deployments, where model customization is included, have gotten rather specific (if not humorous) with these values. 

Some favorites include:

• Moose
• Buzzard “Excrement”
• Dump Truck
• Train

To symbolize based upon Fault Cause, the following directions may be conducted:

Step 1:  Right-click on the FiberFault (may be named something else) feature class in the Table of Contents, and choose Properties.  The Layer Properties window appears (Figure 1).

Step 2:  From the Layer Properties window, choose the Symbology Tab.

Step 3:  Choose the Categories option.

Step 4:  For the Values Field dropdown, select the FaultCause field.

Step 5:  Select the Add All Values button, and random symbology for each Fault Cause type will appear (Figure 2).

Step 6:  To change the symbology for the Animal (or others) fault type, double-click the symbol and choose a symbol that satisfies your creative impulses (Figure 3).  Continue as desired, and click the Apply button.

Step 7:  Make sure to save your mapping work as an Esri project (*.mxd) or ArcFM™ Stored Display.

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An oft-overlooked Schneider Electric capability is the ArcFM™ Structure Relate Auto Updater (AU).  This AU will automatically relate a digitized feature to another feature (assigned the STRUCTURE model name) within a given search tolerance (25 Map Units by default).

Assuming that the AU has been assigned and the Fiber Fault has been digitized within 25 Map Units of the cable (suggest setting snapping of Fault to the edge of the cable), an attribute relationship will result.  This will enable the user to determine if there have been any issues along on an existing circuit route or manually selected cable(s).  

As an example, we digitize a fault where a tree falls on the Mork Cable (Figure 4).

After placement, we see that a relationship automatically gets created from the Mork cable to the Tree issue (Figure 5).

Because of this relationship, one can easily conduct the Fiber Manger OOTB traces and determine if there are any issues along the path.

If not already present, conduct the following steps to configure the functionality:

1. Verify/create an integer field (FiberOpticCableObjectID) on the Fiber Fault to receive the ObjectID of the Fiber Optic Cable.
2. Construct a 1:M relationship from the parent Fiber Optic Cable (ObjectID) to the child Fiber Fault (FiberOpticCableObjectID).
3. Add the model name STRUCTURE to the Fiber Optic Cable.
4. Assign the ArcFM™ Structure Relate AU to the On Feature Create event of the Fiber Fault.
5. TEST, TEST, TEST

It should be noted that the ArcFM™ Structure Relate (AU) would also potentially work great in the automatic association of digitized splices with the adjacent Supporting Pole or Underground Handhole.

This blog is dedicated to the late Robin Williams.  He was one of my favorite actors from when I was a child (Mork and Mindy) to adulthood.  The title of this post comes from his Oscar winning movie, Good Will Hunting.