Tagging Underground Electrical Lines in ArcFM™/Designer™

January 8, 2012 — SSP Innovations

Electric utility companies may be required to provide a solution for tagging their underground electric lines for safety and regulation purposes. The solution would be required to meet several requirements, but a few have been noted for this article:

  • Generate a unique tag number for underground electric lines
  • Assign a tag number to installed underground electric lines after design approval
  • Append the phase to the tag number to identify the underground electric line
  • Retain the tag number when replacing an underground electric line
  • Retain the tag number on the source side when splitting the underground electric line
  • Generate a unique tag number on the non-source side when splitting the underground electric line

Utilizing ArcGIS 10 / ArcFM™ 10.0.3 / Designer™ 10.0.3, a solution that meets the above requirements can be developed and would be applied to the following scenarios: Designer™ Workflow, Session Workflow, and Splitting Workflow.

The Designer™ Workflow applies to the graphical design process for design estimation. For example, this graphical design process might include steps such as design estimate, design approved, in construction, as-builts collected, design complete, etc.

When an engineer graphically designs a new underground electric line during design estimation, the following steps should be executed to solve the UG Linear Numbering requirement: (1) a tag number on the conductor will be defaulted with a value of ‘99999’. This is to ensure that tag numbers are not generated and assigned to an underground electric line until the design is approved for construction.

When the conductor records are created, (2) a custom auto updater will populate the label text field on the underground electric line with all tag number and phase values for map display purposes. After the design is approved for construction, (3) a nightly batch application will update the ‘99999’ tag numbers to the next generated sequence numbers for all underground electric lines that are approved for construction.

In the example below, the next generated sequence numbers were ‘0001’, ‘0002’, and ‘0003’. Once the tag numbers are updated (3), the custom auto updater will populate the label text field on the underground electric line with the updated tag numbers and phase values.

underground-linear-numbering-designer-workflow

 

The Session Workflow applies to the data maintenance process in ArcFM™ for applying tag numbers to existing underground electric lines in the field that may not currently have tag numbers: A GIS editor will (1) select an underground electric line, (2) open ArcFM™ Attribute Editor, and (3) right-click “Assign Conductor Tag”.

The GIS editor will (4) click the “Get #” button to get the next generated sequence number for each phase, and lastly, (5) click the “Assign” button which will update the tag number values on the conductor and trigger a custom auto updater that will populate the label text field on the underground electric line with all tag number and phase values for map display purposes.

underground-linear-numbering-session-workflow

The previous paragraphs have described potential solutions for tagging underground electrical lines using the Designer™ and Session workflows. The next and final installment of the Tagging Underground Electrical Lines in ArcFM™/Designer™ series will explore the last tagging scenario of splitting underground electrical lines.

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