topic Water and Waste Water Symbols in Water Utilities Questions

Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomasRiesco — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:00:34 GMT

Im creating a water and wastewater Atlas in a 1" to 300' scale. Im having problems with the current symbols out of the box from ArcMap. For example, if I have a tee and 3 valves one on each water main it all looks like one big ball of symbols. Anyone has any advise on how to fix this issue??

Thanks

Tomas

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:07:03 GMT

We do our maps at 200 scale and we set all the point features 10 feet apart. So a tee with three valves would have all the valves 10' from the interesection.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

HowardCrothers — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:24:32 GMT

Tomas,

Since the scenario you are describing is common for water utilities, we just wrote a blog about it:
http://blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/waterutilities/archive/2010/08/12/data.aspx

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JoshuaDamron — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:29:40 GMT

We do our maps at 200 scale and we set all the point features 10 feet apart. So a tee with three valves would have all the valves 10' from the interesection.

We have had issues with symbol placement with many features, most often with clusters of valves. We find our selves weighing clarity in utility maps vs. accuracy for other engineering purposes. We went with accuracy and instead rely on detail or blow up pages for our utility map books. (We will be upgrading to ArcInfo next month, I am hoping to play with creating representations for all of our valves (Ugh!!)).

Our standard Utility map book is 11x17 at 1:200, it is divided into a water section and storm/sewer section. We offer our crews books both with or without the aerial photos and we use blow up pages for locations where the utilities are complex or confusing. Blow up pages are 11x17 ranging from 1:25-40 scale depending. Our City is not too big so I also created an additional 8.5x11 book with a blow up of every intersection in town to assist with locating valves (typically at 1:20 scale).

Looking at the image you attached I am very impressed with the clarity of your map labeling. At first glance I thought is was a CAD drawing! I like how the ID# tags are different colors for the different features (red= FH, blue = fittings, brown = blow offs, puke green = Air relief valve�??s).

Your labels are so well spaced and very clear, the arrows/ leaders are great! I see from your table of contents that annotation layers were created go create such beautiful labeling. We�??ve considered undertaking that huge task but there is the issue of updating & maintaining the annotation every time the attributes are updated, the overhead gets to be too much.

Thanks for posting the pic and getting my gears thinking!

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JonCollins — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:07:28 GMT

"We went with accuracy and instead rely on detail or blow up pages for our utility map books. (We will be upgrading to ArcInfo next month, I am hoping to play with creating representations for all of our valves (Ugh!!)). "

Josh, Do you know of some information to help me learn to do the blow-ups? I am in the exact boat you are and the blog quoted here was right on the money. As far as cartographic representations is INFO required for these? how well has that worked for you? Thanks, Jon

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:14:44 GMT

We had Nobel Systems do our maps. Their product is second to none. For the blow-ups they created a second geodatabase for display of detail blow-ups that is not networked with the main lines. Also, our legend is on the first page of the atlas, so it gives us more room on the individual pages. Also, the parcels are colored according to the pressure zone.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JimmyY — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:15:59 GMT

We had Nobel Systems do our maps. Their product is second to none. For the blow-ups they created a second geodatabase for display of detail blow-ups that is not networked with the main lines. Also, our legend is on the first page of the atlas, so it gives us more room on the individual pages. Also, the parcels are colored according to the pressure zone.

Hi Tom,

I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a few details on your G9 Atlas attachment. I am currently creating a Sewer system atlas and have run into the same problem with features being clustered too closely together to be of any use. For the blowups, are they a static snap shot or a dynamic extent indicator? If they are a dynamic extent indicator, then how do you overcome the issue of the extent showing the same area in layout view when you change grids? Eg, in my map layout, when I'm in grid 1D, I have an extent indicator showing the specific intersection. But when I move to 1E, I still see the extent indicator for 1D. I hope that makes sense. Thanks.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:49:51 GMT

Hi mtnbker1213,
The Details are actually a feature dataset in the same geodatabase, and they are in a group layer in the data view, not the layout view. Their are significantly less features in the detail feature classes, basically just a point, line and polygon feature, but the symbolization is much more extensive so that it can symbolize each feature as any type of feature in the database.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JoshuaDamron — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:50:52 GMT

Josh, Do you know of some information to help me learn to do the blow-ups?

Jon,

My apologies for not keeping up on this post. The method we used for creating blow ups is relatively simple. I created a polygon feature class which I called �??Grid_11x17_Detail�?� for my data driven pages grid which included fields for page #, page title, scale, & rotation. I created a rectangle at the scale I wanted (I think inch 20�??) then centered the feature at the location I needed it, rotated it as needed and set the rotation field & scale field if needed. I then took this polygon feature and copy and pasted it to other similar locations, repeating a few dozen times and tada! Data driven detail pages!

In production, I print the utility mapbook .MXD and the Details .MXD to PDF separately and compile them into one book after the fact. In the utility map I pull in the detail grid as a hollow polygon and labeled it by the page #. I attached an example detail sheet which goes with the example page I previously posted.

As a side note, at one time I actually created a detail grid of every intersection in town at 1�?�=20�?? scale. I set it up to print to 8.5�?�x11�?� paper. Unfortunately printing separate book with double sided pages was cumbersome and too thick to be useful.

two things I am going to change in my next mapbook print is that in the past I have inserted the detail pages immediately after the reference page (i.e. my numbering would be 39, 40, 41, 41A, 41B, 41C, 42, 43), however I recently changed my books to be double sided, this has created much complexity for me for several reasons:

One is that a double sided book is great because it creates one map two pages wide (which the field guys love cause they feel like they can see so much more) but inserting details breaks this up, therein in the future I will have a section at the end of the book for all the detail pages instead of inserting them immediately after the book page.

Another thing is that I ended up having to have .MXD�??s for both the left and right pages due to my use of a page layout with the page information being along the side margins. I was looking into this post of Production Mapping: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2012/11/08/streamlining-map-element-placement-with-layout-rules/ but now I�??m looking at Tom�??s book above and am pretty certain that I will be re-organizing my page layout and placing my reference info along the bottom margin to avoid this headache I�??ve created for myself.

I wish you the best!

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:13:04 GMT

Joshua,
Beautiful map, with highly accurate placement and highly detailed aerial. I used facing pages for my layouts as well. I used a variation of this sample
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//00s90000002p000000
with a python script that not only creates them, but puts them together in one PDF. See attached.
Two MXDs were used, one with a left page layout and one with a right page layout and I split my page grid into left and right pages so their were two grid feature classes as well. G-9 shown above is a right sided page with the extra margin on the left for the page crotch.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JoshuaDamron — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:43:24 GMT

Tom,
I appreciate the compliment, I like seeing that we have both taken different directions, made thoughtful compromises, and come out with very different maps that serve our City�??s purposes. I have to be honest though, I am foreseeing a shift toward asset management software in our near future and when that comes I�??m not certain how my map style will keep up with the demand for massive labeling annotation�?� perhaps tablets will be my saving grace? We will see�?�

Thank you for the tip with Data Driven Pages tied to Python. I have yet to make the push to learn Python but I appreciate the good documentation in your script, makes it so dummies like me can make it work.

Would you be able to post your symbols legend? I think many find it useful to compare symbology styles. I�??m seeing that you have mapped fittings as well, very clean and impressive. Did you use out of the box ESRI symbology of did you make your own fittings symbols?

Hi mtnbker1213,
The Details are actually a feature dataset in the same geodatabase, and they are in a group layer in the data view, not the layout view. Their are significantly less features in the detail feature classes, basically just a point, line and polygon feature, but the symbolization is much more extensive so that it can symbolize each feature as any type of feature in the database.

The blow up details you have are awesome to say the least. I understand that the tact you have used is to place the details in the Data View as a feature, so the dashed circle around a detail is a white polygon feature class with a dashed border set above the parcels and behind the various line/point features. The line and point features are a �??dummy�?� feature for visual purposes only, trimmed to length in the polygon and symbolized to match the �??real�?� water features. If I have that right then I applaud the creativity of merging some CAD philosophy with GIS.

Keep up the good work.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JoshuaDamron — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:03:42 GMT

As far as cartographic representations is INFO required for these? how well has that worked for you?

To answer your representations questions, so far as I know you need an ArcINFO/ArcAdvanced license to create them. In my experinces to date I have not found representations to be very user friendly on a large scale for purposes such as map books. Honestly I�??d love to find a clear tutorial on representations and representation management but I have not yet so I�??ve done the best I can with what I�??ve figured out on my own�?� If someone would like to help clarify my understanding of representations that would be great!

As I mentioned my ideal use of representations would be to create rules for valve clusters to pull them away from each other for clarity while enabling teh actual features to remain at their actual real world scale able locations/coordinates. Unless I�??m doing something wrong I found this to be overly cumbersome for hundreds or thousands of features. I found that I can for example create 4 rules for 4 valves clustered at an intersection. In theory I would create 4 rules (rules come in many, many shapes and forms):

Rule #1 (north): Offset point symbol along Y axis +3
Rule #2 (south): Offset point symbol along Y axis -3
Rule #3 (east): Offset point symbol along X axis +3
Rule #4 (west): Offset point symbol along X axis -3

Adding representations to the geodatabase adds a rule field, each rule name is added to the applicable features in the rule field. I could then simply select all of the valves on the north end of a cluster and field calculate to add Rule #1. I would then repeat this for each direction. This would be perfect if all of our mains were aligned with streets and all of the streets ran north/south by east/west.

The problem is how many streets intersect at the same angles and how many water main valve clusters actually intersect at similar angles? In my town there�??s a handful at one angle here and a handful at another angle there which makes representations cumbersome as the points slide further and further from the line with shifting angles. To overcome this a new rule is created to place valves at slightly different locations for each angle�?� which raises the question of how many rules can you keep straight? It would be great if you could structure a rule to recognize a topological relationship between a point and a line and have it offset a point a desired distance along a line and have the point remain over the line. Again, I don�??t consider myself very advanced in the use of representations but as far as I know representation rules can�??t be tied to topoplogy rules.

While many aspects of ArcINFO/Advanced have proven to be incredibly useful, with representations I�??ve only used them for a few isolated circumstances but found them to be generally hard to keep track of. I'm sure there is a discussion of how users are organizing their representations to easily keep track of intricacies of the many different rules and where they are used but I haven't stumbled onto it yet.

I wish you the best.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:03:49 GMT

Here is my water legend Joshua. These are standard symbols, or easily created custom symbols. I have to give Nobel credit for a lot of the look of the map. I have just added to it over the years.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JoshuaDamron — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:20:05 GMT

Tom,
Thank you for the legend, I realized its rude to ask you to show me yours without showing you mine�?�

Among other things, I see that you included casings/encasements & vaults; I�??ve been working to add these as a line feature with a heavier width than the water/sewer main that is encased and showing vaults (including some larger manholes) as polygons. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

Happy Monday!

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:30:03 GMT

No offense taken Joshua, I ask for stuff here all the time. I'm glad I can pay it back. We are showing casings and easements as polygons, I just think it is more versitile for exporting as a polygon.

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JimmyY — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:28:35 GMT

The blow up details you have are awesome to say the least. I understand that the tact you have used is to place the details in the Data View as a feature, so the dashed circle around a detail is a white polygon feature class with a dashed border set above the parcels and behind the various line/point features. The line and point features are a �??dummy�?� feature for visual purposes only, trimmed to length in the polygon and symbolized to match the �??real�?� water features. If I have that right then I applaud the creativity of merging some CAD philosophy with GIS.

Keep up the good work.

Tom and Josh,

I believe I am missing a key piece of the puzzle. I understand creating a separate polygon feature for the AOI under its own dataset and group with the details. But what confuses me is each feature class has its specified coordinate system, when you add the data, how do you place it in the blowup polygon and not have it placed on its correct GPSed coordinates within the map? Or am I completely off my rocker? If it would be easier to explain over the phone, or what I'm asking doesn't make sense and you'd be willing to PM me your number, I'd be very grateful! Thanks!

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

TomMagdaleno — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:44:34 GMT

I think what you are thinking is that I use the same feature in the blow up. I do not. I create a new feature with a very simple table because its really only for visual reference. Its practically like placing graphics in the map, but its in a feature class. Does this make sense?

Re: Water and Waste Water Symbols

JimmyY — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:59:25 GMT

Ohhh okay. Now it just clicked and makes sense now. I was thinking exactly that. I thought you used the same feature class from your primary map and copied it into a different dataset. That just didn't make sense. haha. I understand now of the simplified feature class and it practically just being a graphic. Thanks!