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RE: Wiki - Customer Meter Not Connected

Regarding the following Wiki: communities.bentley.com/.../finding-customer-meters-not-connected-via-a-lateral

I created the model from scratch and hand drew the laterals, customer meter and main pipeline.  When creating the customer meter to lateral to pipe it creates the tap on the pipeline.  How does this connection get severed or loose that associated link?  Is it a bad database file?  Luckily my selection set is under 50 so manually reconnecting them is not hard but on my next vanilla project how can I guarantee that this connection won't be severed in the future?

Parents
  • nkg2,

    Are you saying that your customer meters were properly associated with a pipe and then something happened and now they are not? Or, are you just wondering what type of situation could cause this type of disconnection? (and a need to use the method in that wiki article in order to fix it)

    I created that article based on this forum post in 2017: Customer Lateral

    I cannot foresee all possible situations where a customer would lose its associated pipe, but here are just a few thoughts:

    • If you selected "no" from the prompt that asks you whether you want to attach to the pipe, when manually laying out a customer > lateral > tap on top of a pipe. This is mentioned at the bottom of the wiki article in question.
    • If you manually deleted the associated pipe for some reason and laid out a new one.
    • If Skelebrator were used to simplify the network and the underlying pipe was removed as part of that run. For example a series pipe merge.
    • If the customers, taps, laterals and pipes were imported via ModelBuilder and you did not want to use LoadBuilder to associate them (and maybe manually associated a few but not all, and want to see which ones you missed)

    As the article indicates, if you want to make sure that you do not have any disconnected customer meters, you can run a special query.


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

  • Jesse -

    Stranger things happen and can't prove it one way or another however in the same model using both EPS and Steady State, I had good runs and the data supported my input.  Then last night, I added a new scenario and all I changed was the demand pattern.  Ran it and I had one of my customer meters not associated with it.  It is strange.  

  • ngk2, it is hard to say why this happened. When you created the new scenario, did you only change the demand alternative in that new scenario? (was it a child of the one in question?)

    When you say that the customer meter was not associated, do you mean that the dashed line did not show (but the associated element field was populated?) or that the associated element field showed as None?

    If you switch back to the other scenario, does the customer meter in question then have its associated element populated? 

    If you can provide a "before" copy of the model, with steps to get the customer meter association broken, we can take a deeper look. Sharing Hydraulic Model Files on the OpenFlows Forum


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

  • I have already added and saved over.  I think I need to make another scenario and will try and see if I can duplicate it.  

    So yes I created a base scenario and not a child one based on the addition of PRV on one of the main lines.  So I went from SS to EPS and added a demand pattern.  When I went to compute the model, I got an error saying that a customer meter was not associated and was excluded from the calculation.  When I went to the Flextable under the column Associated Element it was blank. When I look at the associated lateral line that connects the meter to the main, the lateral shows the customer meter and the pipe/junction but for whatever reason it lost the other.  So I click in the box for that meter under associated element and click on the pipe or junction it was to go to and it works again.  In the spirit of Halloween, we will call it Gremlins.  

  • Hello nkg2,

    If this is something which is occurring for this specific model, it would be worthwhile to have it checked out. Please use the link Jesse provided in the earlier response and share the model files.

    If this is happening when switching between scenarios please check the alternatives created. If there was some problem when creating the alternative or if an alternative in improperly configured, please check if removing it and recreating it works.


    Regards,

    Yashodhan Joshi

  • I spent a little time experimenting in a sample file and could not reproduce the issue, even when creating a new base scenario. Having the "before" model and steps to reproduce would be very helpful. 


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

  • I will send it in tonight or tomorrow.  Thanks for looking.  Is there a way to get the before or do you have to extract it using the track changes feature?

Reply Children
  • Is there a way to get the before or do you have to extract it using the track changes feature?

    If you only saved the model once since the "before" condition, you could pull the "before" model from the automatic backup files (.WTG.SQLITE.01.BAK). You might also be able to backtrack based on the Change Tracking log, though that might be difficult if there have been a lot of changes. The other option is to simply try to set up a model again to mimic the conditions "before" the issue (or the current model revision with a new customer meter added), then document the steps needed to go from that copy of the model to the condition where the associated element gets disconnected.


    Regards,

    Jesse Dringoli
    Technical Support Manager, OpenFlows
    Bentley Communities Site Administrator
    Bentley Systems, Inc.

    Answer Verified By: nkg2 

  • I have saved several times since then.  I hit save after every major change that I like so that I don't lose the effort.  I will still box up the file and send it.  It may be just one of those things that if I catch it I will let you know.