Introduction

The PlugIn tool for WinCanVX has been particularly designed for the ESRI products ArcMap or ArcPro. Both products are especially used by the water authorities of cities for the management of larger pipe line systems. The PlugIn therefore acts as a bridge between ArcMap/ArcPro and a WinCanVX database where all the inspected sections are managed.

This finally allows the user to transfer basic data from ArcGIS to WinCanVX and to visualize inspection data from WinCanVX in ArcGIS.

Either a local WinCanVX database or a SQL-server database can be used as a container for gathering the inspection data which are continuously updated. The sketch below shows the basic work flows of such an environment:

System requirements

The following hardware and software parts are required in order the user is able to visualize the latest inspection results in ArcGIS at any time. Especially mind the version numbers of the software parts:

1.) Windows 10, PRO or Windows 11, PRO

2.) DotNet, version 6.X

3.) Graphic Board from NVidia (GeForce, series 9 or higher) with 2 VGA/DVI ports

4.) WinCanVX, ESRI-PlugIn; the latest version 2.5.2 is only compatible to the software parts below:

ArcMap 10.5 and higher or ArcPro 3.0 and higher
WinCanVX, version 1.1.2024.16.X or higher

Installation

After installing and licensing the software ArcGIS the user has to download and install the latest version of WinCanVX_SETUP (1.1.2017.10 or higher) as well as the latest version of WinCanESRIPlugin_SETUP.
When opening ArcGIS afterwards the user is able to activate an additional toolbar that contains the basic commands to control the interactivity between ArcGIS and WinCanVX:

Select the command Customize > Toolbars to show the WinCan Tools toolbar as shown above. Simply grab the WinCan toolbar and dock it to another symbol bar located at the top of the ArcGIS main interface.

The PlugIn Toolbar

The WinCan toolbar provided by the ESRI PlugIn contains the following commands:

1.) Select the layer you actually want to work with

2.) Set the field mapping to transfer the field contents from ArcGIS to WinCanVX

3.) Transfer selected elements of a layer into WinCanVX

4.) Define how the sections selected in WinCanVX will be shown in ArcGIS: The following methods are available:

5.) Hit this button in order to have the section selected in ArcGIS shown in WinCanVX

Field Mapping for Sections and Manholes

Before GIS-data can be transferred into the software WinCanVX each GIS field needs to be mapped or assigned to the corresponding WinCan field.

The section/manhole fields listed below contain the most important information to be transferred in order to start with the pipe survey in WinCan.

These fields can be picked directly from the mapping dialogue after you selected the corresponding layer (1). Proceed as follows to assign the GIS section fields (2) with the appropriate section fields (3) used in WinCan:

Proceed as follows to assign the GIS manhole fields (2) with the appropriate manhole fields (3) used in WinCan:

Note that the name of the layer fields (2) are taken directly from the GIS and cannot be modified with the PlugIn tool from WinCan. In most cases the user must figure out from the name what kind of information the layer field (GIS-field) really contains.

As soon as you're sure the GIS field selected in group 2 would match perfectly to the corresponding WinCan field in group 3 you can hit the button Add (4) to set the field mapping for each pair of fields.
Finally hit the button OK (5) to confirm the field mapping for the current layer.

Transferring Data into WinCanVX

Make sure all the data are loaded in ArcGIS and that you created a new empty project in WinCanVX. This project should be based on the official standard mostly used in your country (e.g. PACP6, WRC4, WSA2013, EN-13508 etc.).

Switch back to ArcGIS, activate the corresponding layer (e.g. SECTION) and select a group of objects you want to transfer. Clicking on the Transfer button finally transfers the selected objects into WinCan.

After the data transfer both software parts ArcGIS and WinCanVX are able to communicate with each other: the WinCan PlugIn has created a new layer group (1) that allows the user to check which sections have already been transferred (1a). In addition a WinCan panel (2) pops up and provides a group of three buttons:

Control of the inspection progress

From now inspections can easily be planned using the filter tool in WinCanVX and exporting the sections into a new project which finally is copied on the computer in a CCTV-truck.

After the inspection the project must be copied back from the CCTV-truck to the office computer and merged into the main project database linked to ArcGIS.

As soon as you run the communication (2) between ArcGIS and WinCanVX you will see directly the sections that have been transferred into WinCanVX (1a) and been inspected (1b). So you may highlight an inspected section in WinCan (3), browse through the list of observations (4) and follow their positions on the map (4a). ArcGIS an WinCanVX are now fully synchronized:

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