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Assign Customer Information to Customer Meter Element

I have a shapefile that contains property information such as deed holder, physical address, etc.  Is there a way to bring that shapefile in and assign one or more of the attributes of the shape file to the customer meter ID or label?  Currently CU-## is auto generated but to make it more easily understood is there a way to personalize it so to speak.  Thanks!

  • You can import the customer meter elements external information such as address, phone number etc. using external customer meter data setup just like you would import using Modelbuilder. External customer meter data setup can be found at View > Customer Data > Establish connection. 

    More information on external customer meter data setup can be found in below technote. 

    Customer Meter Elements and the External Customer Meter Data Manager 

    Regards,

    Sushma Choure

    Bentley Technical Suppport

  • What we usually do is determine what customer information is most relevant for the modeler/user of the model (customer name, capacity of watermeter, type of customer etc.). This information is added to each customer meter in the model (either through existing fields or manually created User Data Extension fields). All other information is only stored in the customer database which can be connected to through the method Sushma mentioned. The downside of only using the method Sushma mentioned is the fact that you cannot label/color code the elements based on data in that external database connection, you can only select one or more elements and see the additional customer data in table form (it does however keep your model tidy and compact since the additional customer data is not stored directly into the model database). 

  • That is good to know.  Thank you!  I am merely just trying to assign a name and/or physical address to each meter to give context and talking points.  I am not worried about demand as fortunately and unfortunately, I am dealing with unmetered water and wastewater systems, so I get to play with assumed design data which usually is conservative to begin with.  So, with Sushma's method and your idea, the issue that I have is that my data file needs to already know what CU-1 is.  What I was hoping to do was bring in parcel information, much like Model Builder, and where the CM is located within the parcel that it assumes the information I tell it.  So for example I have these polygons that represent the property that he customer meter is located.  What I want to do is tell model builder, or whatever method, that any CMs located within that polygon replace Label with the attribute of deedholder or physical_loc from the shapefile for that particular polygon.  That way it is automatic and i don't have to go into the shapefile itself, assign a new column called WaterGEM_ID and then map between the two.  Just as easy to manipulate each CM individually at that point.   

  • Hi,

    So, you have customer meter elements in the model but the labels do not link up to the respective polygon that has the information you want to import? If so, try converting the polygon shapefile into a point shapefile (there should be a tool in ArcGIS for example to do this based on polygon centroid), then use the Spatial Join feature in ModelBuilder to map the polygon centroid (point shapefile) to the nearest customer meter. You can then import the desired extended information as needed using UDX or the customer meter data manager as previously mentioned. You can read a bit more about the Spatial Join feature here and here.


    Regards,

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

  • The problem is that I am not able to see CM's as a target element:

    I keep getting pump station as the table type and I don't have any pump stations on this model.