Batch pipe split creates negative lengths

Question

Hi guys, 
 I have a pretty large model, in where I connected my hydrants with batch pipe split. The mains have user-defined length. Some hydrants have a lateral pipe (with calculated length), with a junction placed over the main. After splitting thousands of pipes, some of the new pipes (~100) had negative or zero length. 
 I made a query to filter these and group edited the length to 0.1m, to get through validation. 
 Have anyone faced this problem before? 
 Is there a numeric limit of the minimal distance between two junctions? - This might be the source of the problem. 
 Best regards,

Jesse Dringoli · Accepted Answer

Hi Attila, 
 Thanks for the details. After spending some additional time attempting to reproduce the issue, I believe I know what may be going on here. I suspect there are cases where the junction that overlaps the main pipe is actually overlapping another junction already connected to the main line, at the same coordinates. Consider the below case, where J-4 is connected to P-1 and P2, and J-2 is connected to P-3. The two junctions overlap (I used the same exact X and Y coordinates), with no pipe between them.

If you run the batch pipe split tool on this network, it indicates two splits occur, one for P-1 and one for P-3

In the pipe flextable, you can see that a few new pipes were created, two of which are connected between the overlapping nodes, with a length of zero since the nodes have the same coordinates

Here's the result in plan view:

And here's what we see when zoomed in and with the node dragged to the side a bit. I added a bend so you can easily see the two parallel pipes:

This situation likely would not occur if the model was built with Modelbuilder where all the pipes were imported at once and the tolerance option was used to connect pipes based on spatial proximity. 
 If you can confirm that this is what has happened in your model, you could delete the two resulting parallel pipes, right click on the end of one of the pre-existing main pipes, choose Reconnect, attach it to the junction connected to the lateral pipe, then delete the left-over junction. 
 One possible option for detecting this situation before running batch pipe split would be to run the "Nodes in close proximity" query in Network Navigator (under the Network Trace category), with a very small tolerance set. Use the highlight button to highlight any occurrences, zoom to each one, then manually connect by dragging the junction that's connect to the lateral pipe to the side, right click on the end of the lateral pipe, choose "Reconnect", attach it to the node on the main pipe, then delete the leftover junction. 
 Please let us know if the above explains the problem you have occurred and we'll look into improving the batch pipe split in the tool in cases like this, and document the workaround above in our Wiki.