Assigning attributes (circuit type) to span wires

As part of the Poles and Wires editing process, you have the ability to tag each wire with an attribute - typically this is used to assign a circuit type to the wires. The assignment of the circuit type can then be used in a number of downstream analytics processes, including:

• Color of the wire in the viewer and possible display filtering based on the assigned wire type
• Assignment of a defined feature class/code to points along the wire, based on the assigned circuit type
• Determine if the wires is included in encroachment stages, and which strategy is used for the encroachment analysis for the wire
• Inclusion of the value in other outputs, such as SHP or KML files

Another key benefit of assigning circuit types to wires is that this allows the edit tool to do automatic validation across spans. When all wires in a span are assigned circuit types, the edit tool will attempt to auto-assign (based on spatial adjacency tests) all matching wires on adjacent spans. If all wires in a span are assigned a circuit type through this matching process, the span will be marked as checked. This can speed up the QA process significantly, by using the wire information to auto-check spans for you. Spans that have been checked will have their network line displayed as green, rather than orange in the viewer.

Using the Assign Wire Circuits tool

The Assign Wire Circuits Tool can be found within the Span editing mode. You can also use the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+A to change to this tool.

When active, the tool displays a list of possible circuit types (these have been pre-configured as part of your company metadata). The tool will automatically assign a shortcut key to each circuit type, based on their order in the configuration. When the tool is active, you can quickly change the circuit to be assigned by pressing the corresponding key (e.g. press 1 for primary) on the keyboard.

To assign the circuit type for a wire, selected the active circuit type from the Circuit dropdown (or use the corresponding keyboard shortcut) and then click on a wire to assign the circuit. The wire will immediately change colour to the configured colour of the circuit type (e.g. Primary wires will display as red by default). Note that wires that have no circuit assigned will display as pink in the viewer.

Auto-assigning circuit type adjacent spans

Once you have assigned all wires for a span, as shown below:

pressing the Enter key will perform two actions - (1) It will mark the span you are editing as checked (it will turn green), and then (2) it will request the tool to propogate the assigned circuit definitions as far as possible along connected spans.

If the adjacent spans have the same number of wires and the connection points are in close proximity, then cicuit types will be automatically assigned to the adjacent span. If all wires are assigned, then span will be marked as checked, and the process will continue with the next adjacent span until there is a mis-match. This allows you to very rapidly auto-check/QA a group of spans.

Note in the image below, which shows the view after pressing ENTER on the keyboard, that the connected span has the wires assigned, and both spans have been marked as checked (they are displayed as green network lines).

You can also force span auto matching by using the Check tool to mark a span as checked. Other tools, such as Create Span will detect that adjacent spans have assigned circuits and if they are marked as checked, will then automatically invoke the auto-match on the new span that was created.