How to fix thousands of ambiguous connectivity errors en masse?

[Andy_Morgan]

I need help to understand a pretty fundamental concept for designing a UN. I'm preparing to migrate our water GN to a UN, and in some first round attempts of applying our asset package to UN (FGDB) we have ~8,000 instances of the following network error indicating ambiguity. 

  9: Invalid connectivity – More than one junction edge rule applicable

While there is this ESRI tutorial on interactively fixing errors in Pro (under Network Topology, click Terminal Connections...etc.), that's not realistic when you have to resolve many thousands of cases at a time.

My question:  Can someone walk me through, or point to a page with, the general steps for handling this in bulk? Is there no way to mass update our features beforehand, or refine the rules in the asset package, without losing critical connectivity logic to say "this line can connect to this device/junction"? 

I used the rules that came out of the box with the Water Distribution UN Foundation. Here is one of dozens of examples of pairs of rules that seem to be causing ambiguous connectivity errors due to multiple water mains touching the same device or junction. 

Rule Type	From Table	From Asset Group	From Asset Type	From Terminal	To Table	To Asset Group	To Asset Type
Junction-edge connectivity	Water Device	Flow Valve	Air Gap	Port 1	Water Line	Water Main	Distribution Main
Junction-edge connectivity	Water Device	Flow Valve	Air Gap	Port 2	Water Line	Water Main	Distribution Main

Even if I delete all rules in the asset package that meet the following criteria, it only reduced the number of errors by a couple hundred.

 Where rule_type = 'Junction Edge Connectivity' And from_terminal = 'Port Two'

What does one do in this case?

Example from our data. There are two separate water main segments touching the System Valve that is labeled.

[RobertKrisher]

Removing the second rule is a bad idea and you should roll it back immediately. That would connect all the valves to the same port, which means that the flow valves can't control flow and operable valves can't close (because water isn't flowing through them).

Take a look at this thread for how to access a tool to populate terminals en masse.

[Andy_Morgan]

Even though both replies were the needed answer, I'm marking Mike's answer as the solution simply because it had a screenshot that helped me see where to go.

Thanks, Robert!

[MikeMillerGIS · Accepted solution]

Have you tried the Assign Terminal Connection tool?

[Andy_Morgan]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had actually tried the Modify Terminal Connections tool a few days ago in my many rounds of attempting to lessen the number of errors in bulk, including the use of add/set terminal configurations. I must not have noticed Modify Terminal Connections helps.

I ran as shown below:

Modify Terminal Connections

  Domain Network: Water

  ☑  Honor digitized direction

  ☑  Keep existing terminal values

Now, after enabling network topology (with "Only generate errors" checked), I have a total of 10,129 errors. Much better already. This eliminated the vast majority of those ambiguous rule situations. Only 61 code #512 errors remain. The other categories of errors are mostly cases where we need to either define the allowed E-J relationship with a new rule or else add fittings where they don't exist at certain types of intersections. 

So for water assets, should I uncheck either or both of those options ("honor digitized direction" and "keep existing terminal values")?   

I'll need to do this later for our sewer network. I would think sewer needs digitized direction honored since that's a one-way (sink) path.

[RobertKrisher]

The digitized direction of the sewer system will be more reliable since the digitized direction of mains typically indicates flow with respect to gravity.

he same can't be said for water, where the system typically operates under pressure and is highly looped. It would be nice if the edges were always drawn to indicate upstream/downstream, but I suspect in many datasets this is not the case.

That's my long-winded way of saying I would honor digitized direction for sewer but not for water. Once you create a subnetwork (water treatment plant, wastewater treatment plant) and run update subnetwork, you'll be able to see whether you've flipped any terminals because features will be disconnected. Once you create pressure zones (w) and subbasins (ww) you may find that some of your networks are interconnected (inconsisent subnetwork name) because two pipes share the same terminal on a valve.

[Andy_Morgan]

Valuable information. Thanks so much!