Combining Inspections in WinCan VX
- Steve Peregrine
Back to Inspection Merging
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Inspection Merging in WinCan VX
Running the inspection merger with these default rules could not be easier and only takes three mouse clicks. In the shortest possible description, all you have to do is:
Figure 3: Quick and easy inspection merging with default settings.
Click on the ’Combine Abandoned inspections’ button in the WinCan VX ‘Tools’ ribbon.
Click on the checkbox at the top-left of the list of sections that are eligible for merging to select all in the current project.
Click on the green tick to execute the merge.
The result will now be that all pipes that were eligible for merging under the golden rule will now have a new inspection added which is the combined one. This inspection will either be flagged as abandoned or completed based on the logic described above and will include all of the photos from the two donor inspections, and will include a video at each end of the pipe. The default inspection direction of the combined inspection is always downstream for consistency.
The results may look like Figure 4:
Figure 4: Inspection combining results.
In both cases, notice that there is a new icon on the inspection list button. This icon is used to indicate that this inspection is merged.
Notice also that in the first result, there are 2 diagonal red lines and section of pipe that is ‘not inspected’, so this inspection has been flagged by the software as ‘combined and abandoned’, because the whole pipe has not been inspected.
In the second example, we again have the new inspection button indicator, but this time we have a horizontal green dashed line on the pipe graph. This line indicates where the most recent inspection ends, and the one from the other end takes over. This is the result when the two inspection overlapped each other, so this inspection has been flagged as ‘combined and complete’.
In WinCan VX, you will see also that there is an inspection video attached to the first observation and the last observation as expected here, so both of the inspection videos can be accessed from each end of the pipe in a single inspection record.
Let’s look at the options in the inspection merger panel more closely in Figure 5:
Figure 5: The control panel.
As stated already, the pipes in the list will only be those that are eligible for combining based on the golden rule of at least one abandoned inspection from each end. Each line of data in the box represents one pipe with two selected inspections, and the most recent selected inspections have been selected automatically.
The checkboxes top-left can be used if you only want to combine select objects, or you can click the box at the top to select all.
The columns across the table view show:
Section – this is the pipe ID of the asset.
Upper node – this is the upstream node ID.
Lower node – this is the downstream node ID.
Direction 1 – shows the inspection direction of the 1st inspection.
Length 1 – shows the inspection length of the 1st inspection.
Direction 2 – shows the inspection direction of the 2nd inspection.
Length 2 – shows the inspection length of the 2nd inspection.
Total Insp. Length – shows the total length of the 2 inspections.
New Length – shows the section total length from the section header – note that you can click in this box and edit this length if you wish, and it will update the total length of the pipe during the merge, but this Is not usually recommended.
New direction – shows the inspection direction that will be used for the combined inspection – this is always downstream by default and although this option can be changed, there is little point in doing this under normal circumstances.
There are four checkbox options at the bottom of the panel:
The first one ‘Show only most recent inspections’ is on by default. Go back to the scenario No. 6 earlier in this document. In a case like this, there are two possible combining situations – we could combine inspection 1 and 3, or 2 and 3. As described already, the default will be 2 and 3 because 2 was done after 1. Unchecking this user option will show a 2nd line in the data grid and you will be able to select which one of the 2 options you wish to combine.
The second checkbox ‘Auto-calculate new length’ is off by default. When this option is selected, the total pipe length is not considered, and the 2 inspections are just glued together back-to-back, which then modifies the total length of the pipe. This option is not recommended to be selected, but some central European countries like Germany and Austria prefer the combined inspection to be represented this way, even if it make the pipe much longer or much shorter than it actually is, and there may be observation code of the same defect at different positions along the pipe.
The third option ‘Show modified inspections (changed since previous merge)’ is off by default. There may be a situation where the user has created combined inspections, but then has subsequently made edits on one or both of the inspections that were used to create the combined inspections. Checking this box will list objects that are eligible to be re-combined again following edits of the source inspections.
The last option ‘Mark abandoned inspections as deleted’ is off by default. When active, the 2 inspections that are used to make the combined inspection will be deleted after the merge. This may be useful in some scenarios but the overall advice is not to select it, because it is a good idea for the contractor to keep a full record of every inspection that they actually did on site, and the combined inspection is not one of these, it is a ‘calculated’ inspection record derived by the software application.