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Back to WinCan VX DDMS User Guide
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Introduction
Most of the descriptions included in this manual up to this point have been designed to help the guys on site in the CCTV truck work as effectively as possible to maintain efficiency and profitability during the works.
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It is essential the section Using WinCan VX with WinCan Map is considered in detail before working through this section.
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Plotting Uncharted Assets
There will often be instances where you need to create objects (pipes and nodes) in WinCan VX that do not exist in the loaded data, either because there simply is no existing data on the system for the stretch of highway that you are working on or because you because there is data, but you have located uncharted assets.
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First node plotted.
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All finished.
Connecting a Lateral to a Main
Now, let’s extend the previous inspections so that it has some connection code in the inspection data at 25m (at 2 o’clock) and 32m (at 10 o’clock), and there are some gullies on each side of the central reserve plotted in the data, like this:
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Connection codes in the inspection and pre-plotted gullies on each carriageway.
At the point of making the connection observations (and these can be any junction or connection codes), the user is presented with this special field in the observation data entry window:
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Observation data entry for connections and junctions.
This field allows us to enter the node ID of the point item that is upstream from the connection or junction, so in the first case of the junction at 2 o’clock it is most likely to be GY1000 and in the second case for the connection at 10 o’clock, it is likely to be GY2000.
In this field you can:
Select a point item that already exists in the data - you must type in the first two characters of the node before the list self-populates.
Enter the node ID of a new point item that currently does not exist in the data.
After you have done this, have a look in the node area of WinCan VX:
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New nodes added by the software.
Notice that we now have 6 nodes, where before we started these additional steps, there were only 2 (CP1 and CP2). You will see that the gullies GY1000 and GY2000 have been created and also that the connector nodes CN_GY1000_CP1.1 and CN_GY2000_CP1.1 have also been created at the observation code coordinates.
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Info - this only works as expected in the HADDMS typical naming convention of you have setup WinCan VX exactly as described in Setting Up WinCan VX for HADDMS. |
All that remains to be done to complete the ‘dot-to-dot’ is to create laterals for the two gully legs. You can do this even if you cannot inspect them on this shift. You are simply creating the assets, not carrying out an inspection, because on this shift you cannot get to the central reservation.
Why create laterals and not sections? Refer back to Section & Lateral Differences where the differences between sections and laterals are described in detail, and the golden rule is that a lateral is any linear asset with a connector node at the downstream end.
So, after we create 2 laterals, the VX lateral list looks like this:
GY1000 → CN_GY1000_CP1.1
GY2000 → CN_GY2000_CP1.1
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Laterals created.
Notice that the laterals have the required upstream and downstream node IDs but they do not have any inspection data. They can be inspected on the next shift when we have a lane 3 central reserve traffic management closure.
Be sure to set the pipe depth in the lateral header at the downstream end of these pipe to be blank or zero to avoid any unnecessary calculations as described in Being Smart with Z Values.
Look also now in WinCan Map and see that everything is drawn already:
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WinCan Map plan with laterals added and connected.
How has this happened? Did you notice that t no point was there any nodes listed in the manhole panel on the right side? This is because at all times the items had geometry, whether they were plotted by the user or automatically by the software, so as soon as the laterals were created, the lines were drawn.
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In the section observation grid view, you will see a ‘Lateral’ column with a grey button similar to the ones found in the photo and movie clip columns. These means that you can attach ‘something’ to this observation:
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Lateral link flag location.
In this case, we can tie the lateral into the section at this observation code by double clicking on the grey button of the correct observation and selecting the lateral that is connected here, and the result looks like this:
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Laterals linked.
The icon shows you that a lateral is tied in here and double clicking on this link will take you straight to that lateral in the other grid view, and there is also a button with an ‘up’ triangle arrow in the lateral grid view which will bring you bak to the section that this lateral is linked to.
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Advice - although this technique does not really appear to make a great difference to the data and the drainage network design, it’s power is that because the laterals and the section are now tied together, when we introduce the GIS data at a future point and in that data, the 2 gullies and the 2 catchpits now have new coordinates in 3 dimensions (so far, everything has had no Z value here), the shape geometry of the sections and laterals will be modified and the coordinates of the connector nodes will be replotted, so everything will stay tied together when the new positions are introduced. If you do not make the lateral links, then the lateral pipes will become detached from the section when the new positions are brought in and it becomes very (unnecessarily) time consuming to re-attach them all. |
There are some additional techniques for joining objects together using the snapping tools in WinCan Map, but these are more usually used by data processing teams, and will be described in Snapping Objects in WinCan Map.
Creating New Inspections of Existing Assets
Using the techniques described in Using WinCan VX with WinCan Map, we can quickly and effectively navigate between objects in WinCan VX and WinCan Map without the need for manual searching.
So there is an existing asset that you need to inspect which already exists in the data because it was imported from the HADDMS shapefile at the start of the round tripping process. First, ensure that the section or lateral (or node) is focussed and selected in the grid view.
Because the data was imported, there may or may not be observation codes already attached to this object, but of they were imported then they will be showing greyed out as read-only. They will also likely contain incorrect observation codes from the old WinCan v7 days, but this does not matter as is described in Creating Exports for Delivery.
Now, see the two buttons in the bottom bar of the grid view:
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The ‘New Inspection’ buttons.
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Warning - the big mistake that people make here is working the same way that they did in WinCan v7 (and most likely in WinCan v8). In these versions of WinCan, when you wanted to create a second (or more) inspection of an asset, you simply created a new object with the same details as the first one in the grid view and then carried out a new inspection. !!! THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN IN WINCAN VX !!! See additional info in the next section. |
To create a new inspection of the object, you simply have to click on one of the two buttons shown in the image above. Hovering your mouse over the buttons will tell you what they do:
Create new inspection - this will present with you with a pop up where you can select;
a new blank inspection - you will be taken to the inspection header where you can fill in the required inspection details like your name etc,
a new downstream inspection, or
a new upstream inspection.
Create new inspection from other side - this will create a new inspection record in the opposite direction to the one that is currently selected in the user view (usually the most recent one unless you select to look at a different inspection record).
When you create a new inspection, the software will automatically add the inventory codes from the previous inspection. Theses are:
START and END codes at the zero and the full length of the asset.
All types of junction and connection codes with their clock positions reflected vertically if the inspection is in the opposite direction (so 2 o’clock becomes 10 o’clock).
All types of bending codes with their direction flipped around the vertical clock axis.
The logic here is that if the previous inspection stated that there was a junction at 1 o’clock at 12 m into a 45m section, then on the reverse inspection there must be a junction at 11 o’clock at 33m into the inspection.
Only inventory codes are copied, not defect codes. From here, you can start an inspection in the normal way.
If you subsequently need to abandon this inspection for any reason, then do not worry about the END code that has been automatically added for you. This will be removed when you complete the abandoned code.
Avoiding Creating Duplicate Objects
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Warning - in WinCan VX, a line in the grid view is a pipe or other object. It is NOT an inspection. A section can have as many inspections as you like and from either end. The direction of the CCTV survey has no relationship with the section. The section (or lateral) is just a pipe in the ground. The column on the right hand side of the grid view with the two magnifying glasses at the top shows you how many inspections there are of this object, and if the field is blank, then there is 1 or no inspections of the asset. |
If you ignore all of the above advice and carry on regardless with creating duplicate assets, then when you enter the header data and click on the save button at the bottom, you will be prompted with this pop up warning:
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Warning 1.
This is the first warning that you will receive and it does not take ant consideration for the inspection direction, so just because the last inspection was downstream and this one is upstream, this makes no difference at all to the fact that you have created a duplicate pipe with the same Supplier’s Reference and the same upstream and downstream nodes.
If you wish, you can click ‘Yes’ and you can proceed, but it is NOT recommended. You will now be prompted with this pop up message:
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Warning 2.
This is your second chance to undo the problems that you are about to create in the data. You can again click on ‘Yes’ if you wish, but this is NOT RECOMMENDED even more strongly than the text just above.
If you continue without following the prescribed process for creating multiple inspections of assets, then you will see something like this in the section/lateral/node grid views - this is what we do not want to see in the data:
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Poor inspection management with duplicate asset IDs.
See now that we have two pipes in the section grid with the same Supplier’s Reference MH1.1. The knock-on affect of this error is that this pipe will never be rendered in WinCan Map because Map does not know which object to draw and will cause all kinds of validation errors.
If we follow the process correctly and create 2 inspections of the asset, then the result in the grid view will look like this:
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Good inspection management.
Notice that there is now only one asset record (because there is only one pipe in the ground) with a unique asset reference ID (MH1.1), and that in the column on the right there are 2 inspections of this asset.
Now we have created 2 (or more) inspections of an asset each with their own videos, observation codes and photos, we can review the inspections using the inspection list in the centre of the screen here:
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Inspection selection.
When you click on the the button in the top left of the lower grid view area, you can see the details of all inspections of the currently selected asset. These include:
The Job Number (Catchment ID) that the inspection is attached to.
The inspection date.
The inspection time.
The inspection direction.
Whether the inspection was completed or abandoned.
Selecting an inspection in this list will take you to the details, video and observations for that inspection.
The default view in WinCan VX for all instances of multiple inspections is that the most recent inspection is always the one that is displayed on screen.
Data Validation
Marking Objects as ‘Inspected’
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