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Quick Guide

The quick guide is giving you a rough overview of the basic work flow operators must know to get a pipe inspection report with the most important data end users (engineers, local water authorities etc.) are especially interested in.

12.08.2022
WinCan Version 1.2022.13.1

Introduction

WinCanVX is a special software application to gather data from pipeline inspections done with camera robots. The application is finally providing you easy readable reports implying pictures and video clips taken/recorded directly via the LiveVideo signal.
Furthermore inclination data, section/manhole sketches and other kinds of information can be assigned to the corresponding pipe sections.
The present guide is giving you a quick overview of the basic work flow operators must know to get a report that contains the most important inspection data.
Unlike in previous versions WinCan VX is providing a main interface split into different working panels that can all be moved freely or individually hidden and thus rearranged on one or several screens. A built-in positioning wizard always selects that spot on the screen where you actually move the preferred panel keeping the left mouse key pressed:

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Once you have rearranged the panels according to your personal needs for the acquisition of main and lateral sections (satellites) or manholes this individual view (profile) can easily be saved for further WinCanVX sessions via the tab Views. The main interface (group of panels) as well as each single panel of course can be maximized to full screen size.

Launching WinCan VX

Double-click on the WinCanVX desktop icon in order to launch the software. First get your personal license code activated (4) using the tab command Home > Manage License > License settings (1,2,3):

All the software modules and functionalities included in the licence package you purchased are activated from now (5).

The main interface is showing you a ribbon bar at the top, subdivided into different tabs (2), a list of the recently created projects (3) and an empty area (4) to display the section/inspection data after a project has been loaded:

Simply click on the command button New Project to create a new project: a wizard (5) then is going to guide you stepwise through the procedure.

Before you are able to start with the survey, the wizard asks you to enter the job data first. The yellow fields require a data input whereas the grey fields can remain empty:

This information is crucial as all inspections are assigned to a job and not to a project directly. A project on the other hand always contains just one single job (1 Project = 1 Job).

Entering project data

Switch to the tab Sections to start with the survey. All data (i.e. section, inspection and observation records as well as media data) are saved continuously within the folder structure, which is administered in the background by WinCanVX:

The folder structure consists on a main folder and a group of sub-folders; the most important ones are listed below:

WinCan VX; Main Interface for Section Survey

WinCan VX; Main Interface for Lateral Survey

WinCan VX; Main Interface for Manhole Survey

Hit the tab Nodes to get a list of all manholes and connection points entered inside the current project. WinCanVX automatically creates the corresponding manhole whose name you entered into the section fields Upstream Manhole or Downstream Manhole.

If you enter the total depth, all inlets and outlets as well as all parts for a specific manhole (1), WinCanVX will be able to draw a 3D view of that manhole (3). The terms used to describe the manhole parts (2) always depend on the currently used standard (e.g. PACP, WRC4, WSA, NZPIM etc. ):

Entering Section and Inspection Data

Highlight a section, lateral or a manhole and double click on it. This is going to open the input mask below, where you can enter all the data needed for the current object. Fields highlighted in YELLOW are mandatory and require data entry:

Entering Observations via Damage Catalogues

The structure of damage catalogues strongly depends upon the standards that are defined by independent authorities. The example below shows and excerpt of the catalogue PACP-6, mainly used in the United States (imperial version) and Canada (metric version):

Damage catalogues in WinCan VX allow the operator to have the most used OP-Codes listed at the top of the code index (1), so there's no need to manually browse for them anymore: simply select the corresponding OP-Code and hit the key F3. To remove the code from the list, select it and type the shortcut Ctrl + F3.

The operator also can create his own list of default remarks used to specify the current observation. Such a list will then be valid for each OP-Code that provides a text box for remark entry. Right click on the text Remarks (1), hit the command Edit list (2), enter the remark text into the list box panel (3) and confirm with the OK-button (4). From now the remarks you set are available when pushing the arrow button (5) right to the remark entry field:

Navigation Functionalities

Browsing between the section and observation records is mainly done via the CURSOR keys. Furthermore the pipe graphic panel provides another navigation tool:

Deleting Objects and Media Data

Right click on any record inside the overview panels, hit the command Delete or select the corresponding icon in the symbol bar. To delete only photos or video clips, right click on the corresponding icon in the observation panel and hit the command Delete photo 1/2 or Delete Clip:

IMPORTANT:
WinCanVX NEVER deletes your data: deleted sections, inspections, laterals or manholes can always be restored via the project manager (Projects > Manage Projects). Deleted photos and video clips are moved directly into the project sub-folder TRASH and can be restored from there.

Recording and Playing Back Video Clips

Always check the LiveVideo settings prior to start recording video clips with your camera equipment: WinCan VX officially supports two MPEG-encoding devices. After the installation of the software package WinCanVXDriverSetup.exe the corresponding entries appear in the dialogue box as shown below:

Select the entry Vitec VM4 or Sensoray 2253 depending upon which one of these MPEG encoding devices you have currently installed:

Switch on the camera and hit the camera icon to show the LiveVideo signal in the video panel. Pushing the recording button then starts recording a video clip:

Video recording is paused automatically as soon as the damage catalogue is open.
Double click on the clip icon in the field Clip to play back the video clip or double click on the photo icon in the field Photo1/Photo2 to show the picture:

Importing existing Photos and Video Clips

Hit the camera button in the video panel to switch off the LiveVideo signal and double-click on the grey bullet in the field Clip. Use the windows dialogue to browse for the video clips located on your local hard drive, select a video file and click on the Open button:

The video clip is copied automatically into the sub-folder Video\Sec or Video\Nod within the current project.

Hit the camera button in the video panel to switch off the LiveVideo signal and double-click on the grey bullet in the fields Photo1 or Photo2. Use the windows dialogue to browse for the pictures located on your local hard drive, select a picture file and click on the Open button:

The picture is copied automatically into the sub-folder Picture\Sec or Picture\Nod within the current project.

Connection to OSD device

Check the OSD-settings in order to be able to control the display of various text parts as project bar, section data (object data) and values directly provided by OSD-objects (date, time, inclination, distance…) directly from the WinCan software:

Once the communication between OSD-device and computer is established, project bar, section data and observation text are displayed as soon as the user hits the corresponding buttons:

Assigning Project Particpants

Select the command Projects > Project Participants to open the address panel: the left part is subdivided into three address categories: right click into each category or hit the button to create a new address and enable the check box to assign a specific address to the current project:

The right part of the panel allows the user to manage a list of operators, cameras and trucks, which can then be selected directly from the corresponding fields within the inspection panel (page 9).
Client, manager and contractor addresses that have got a check mark will be printed on the project information page. So always make sure you properly assigned the addresses to the current project before you print the whole report.
The contractor panel provides an additional command button to set the currently selected address as the default contractor (1).
This address is going to be assigned automatically to future projects.

To change the contractor's logo simply double-click on the address line, go to the logo field in the address input mask and click on the grey square button. This is going to open a Windows dialogue where you can browse for the corresponding logo file:

Finally hit the button to save your changes.
Each address you create is saved to the file WCMETA.sdf, which is located in the installation folder C:\Users\Public Documents\CDLab\Common\Ressources\sqlCE.
The addresses you have just assigned to the current project are saved to the file [project name]_Meta.sdf which you can find in the project folder DB.

Printing Inspection Reports

Select the command Printing > Printing Panel to open the printing dialogue. Enable the kind of reports you want to print in the left part (1). Select any report type to show a group of specific options you may enable or disable for that report (2).
The third part (3) of the printing dialogue provides options to control the data output.

Finally click on the printer icon to get either a print preview or a PDF file of the inspection report. The progress of this procedure is shown in the status bar below.
Especially mind that large projects with several hundred sections, laterals and manholes may take more than 45 minutes to be printed.

Example of an inspection report:

Copying/Burning Projects to External Drives

Select the command Data Exchange > Media Distribution and follow the steps given by the wizard to have your project copied on a removable disk together with WinCanVX – running in the Viewer mode - or with a LightViewer software.
End customers thus are able to view all project data on their workstations without any licence.

It is recommended to select the distribution type Normal for projects that contain inclination, scan or map data as the Light Viewer only shows basic data (inspection report, video clips, photos).
When selecting the option Normal the project data should be distributed to a USB-stick or USB-disk instead of burning them on a DVD as data are going to be launched much more quickly from USB-drives.

Project distributed with WinCanVX software (option Normal):

Project distributed with the LightViewer software (option Light):

Upload projects to WinCan-WEB

WinCan-WEB is a cloud-based service provided by the company CDLab (WinCan, Switzerland) in collaboration with a professional web hosting company.

This new service allows the CCTV-companies to upload their survey data to a host server, where it can be downloaded from at any time and on any spot on the world by an end customer. So this procedure is able to fully replace the sending of survey data as paper reports or as a batch of DVDs.

However WinCan-WEB is NOT thought to be used as a long term storage medium. Project data thus should only be available for a limited time span.

Create an account

In order to be able to upload and download projects you must create your own account launching your web browser and typing the address http://web.wincan.com. The main screen of WinCan-Web then tells you to either sign in with an existing user account or to register as a new user:

Registration (1) as a new user requires the following information:

• Name of the company (case sensitive)

• Personal e-mail address (case sensitive)

• Personal password (case sensitive)

Your registration will then be confirmed automatically via e-mail. Registration will give you the right for 45 days to use 25 GByte of server disk space for free.

Upload and view projects with Web viewer

At the beginning your personal account is showing an empty list in WinCan-Web. In order to upload a project, open it in WinCanVX and hit the command Tools > Manage Web Projects > Upload Current project (1):

The panel that follows shows the status of the process in the progress bar. Besides that it provides you a list of all available projects on the local hard drive (2) and those which have already been uploaded (3).

You can thus manage your personal web space directly in WinCanVX. Use the button Log in/Log out (4) to enter the profil data of your personal web space.

Once finished you are informed via e-mail the project has been successfully uploaded to your personal web space.

Send project links to end customers

In order to make uploaded projects accessible for end customers, run WinCanVX and hit the command Tools>Manage Web Projects>Manage Web Projects:

Switch to the tab On Web and VX in the dialogue box that follows (2), select the desired project from the list of recently uploaded projects and hit the paper clip icon (3) in order to create a corresponding link:

The dialogue that follows asks you to create a link (4), set an expiration date (5) and finally send it to the receiver (i.e. e-mail address of the end customer (6)).

Make sure the option Allow Download is checked so the end customer will be able to download the project from WinCan-Web.

Direct access to projects via guest account

The end customer himself is informed immediately via e-mail that he will be able to access the project data from now using the Web-Viewer:

When clicking on the corresponding link, he is automatically signed in on the WinCan WEB platform with a GUEST-account, that just allows him to browse through that specific project and to download it to his local computer:

Handy Shortcuts supported in WinCan VX

Customizing shortcuts for a given set of commands is a completely new feature in WinCanVX. Click on Home > Settings > Keyboard Entry and directly hit the corresponding key on your keyboard in order to define the desired shortcut: