Automatic creation of branch lines to orphaned nodes

Hello Florian,

Do you mean these customer nodes are customer elements in WaterGEMS and you want to connect them to nearest junction or pipe, without having to split the pipes? 

Then you could use Loadbuilder to assign these customer elements to the nearest pipe or junction. 

The below technote explains how to achieve this, please go through it. 

Using LoadBuilder to assign Customer Meters to the nearest pipe using taps and laterals 

If this is not what you are looking for then please elaborate your query. 

Hello Sushma,

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately your response does not work for me. I have already a couple of thousand junctions in the network which are defined as consumers in my model (and in GIS source). All these junctions are connected via consumer connection lines (pipes) to the network and form a selection set. Via LoadBuilder "Propotional Distribution by Area" I am already allocating demand data from an GIS shapefile onto these junctions (selection set), considering yearly variations in different scenarios / demand alternatives.

So my question again, for the orphanded consumer (junctions) is there a way to automatically create branch lines from these junctions to the distribution ring lines? Something like a command "Connect nodes to nearest pipe / junction with new pipe".

I would like to have these nodes connected to the network in the end.

Thank you  

Hello Florian,

I see a couple of possible options for you:

1) If the junctions are very close to the pipes and if you can neglect the lateral pipes, use the Batch Pipe Split tool to automatically connect the orphaned junctions to the nearest pipe within a tolerance.

2) If you must include the lateral pipes, convert them into customer elements and use LoadBuilder to automatically create and attach the Tap and Lateral elements:

a. Select all the orphaned junctions in question (either by existing selection set, or by the "orphaned nodes" network navigator query)

b. Right click in the drawing, choose Edit Group, then open the junction table. It will be filtered to only show the junctions in question.

c. Export to shapefile using the export button in the top-left corner.

d. Select the orphaned junctions again, then open the Demand Control Center and filter on selection. Use the Options button at the top of the Demand Control Center > Filter > Current Selection.

e. Copy the contents to memory by clicking the box in the top-left corner of the table (to select all), then press CTRL+C to copy).

f. Open Excel, paste in the contents and save the file. Note that this process assumes that there is only one demand per junction. If there are cases where a junction has multiple demands, note them for later and delete from the Excel file.

g. Create two ModelBuilder connections, one to the shapefile from step c (the junction locations) and the other to the Excel file from step f (the demands per junction). Use Customer Meter as the table type for both connections. Import the shapefile first, mapping only the label field as the Key field. Import the Excel file second, again with Label as the key, and map the demand field.

h. Once the junctions are converted to customer elements, run the LoadBuilder method "Customer Meter Load Data" > nearest pipe (per the article Sushma provided)

This will create the tap and lateral elements connecting the customer elements to the main pipeline.

Dear Jesse,

Thank you for the proposed options. Option #1 is in my case not possible as I already meantioned. Option #2 I guess will do, however I assume in the end to have "Customer Elements" and not "Junctions" connected to the pipes, meaning no pipes with physical properties. Further, this would mix up my demand allocation approach as described above by distributing sector demand (from GIS shapefile) to two different element types. 

So, bottom line regardless of the workaround via "Customer Elements", WaterCAD has no tool to automatically create pipe connections from single junctions to an existing network or wiseversa.

Thanks for your both help.

Florian

Hello Florian,

Using customer elements can have advantages. Since the tap element only attaches to the pipe and does not split it, and since the lateral pipe does not count as a pipe, this approach reduces the number of pipe elements in your model, which has licensing implications (unless you use an Unlimited pipes license)

You can also choose the percentage distribution of the customer element demand on the junctions on either side of the attached pipe. See "Demand distribution (start)" field in the customer element properties. Further, in the LoadBuilder run when you assign the customer meters to pipes and create the taps and laterals, an option is presented on how you would like the demands to be distributed during the import. You can always adjust afterwards.

With that said, if you would still like to use pipes and junctions instead of customer elements, taps and laterals, you could still achieve this. After following all the steps in my suggested option #2, export the Laterals and taps flextables to shapefile, delete them along with the customer elements, then import all three in one ModelBuilder run, mapping the laterals shapefile to the Pipes table type and the taps and demand nodes as junctions. After import, the junctions that were previously taps will be laying on top of the pipe. To attach all of them to the pipe (and split them into two pipes), you would then run the batch pipe split tool. To re-assign the demands to the junctions, you can use another ModelBuilder run with the demand collection table type, or you could re-run LoadBuilder as you had first done.