To Create Duct Areas for Multi Conductors

Multi conductors cannot be placed in ducts like real world underground conductors. They also do not have associated cross sections. You can use an area polygon to represent the duct associated with the conductors. You can create the duct in either of the following two ways:

• Digitize Duct Area—Creates a duct area polygon with the vertices you specify. Optionally, you can select conductors to include in the duct. If you select conductors, they are related to the duct.
• Create Duct Area—Creates a duct area using the geometry of existing conductors (multiconductor or standalone conductor). When you use Create Duct Area, you specify the conductors to include in the duct and the start point and end point of the duct. The duct area is created around the specified conductors. The conductors are related to the duct.

  Due to geometric limitations, sometimes this operation cannot create the duct area in the correct shape. If this happens, use the Digitize Duct Area operation to digitize the duct area manually.

When you create the duct area feature, a duct feature is also created. The duct area is related to the duct feature. The conductors you select during duct area creation are related to the newly created duct.

The duct area is stored in the Duct Area structural feature class. If the duct area is not visible in your map, use Data Connect to load the EL_DUCT_AREA layer.

To create a duct area

1. Display the Electric Explorer.
2. From the profile list at the top of the Electric Explorer, select the profile to use, for example Underground.

   Profiles are created in Infrastructure Administrator . Profiles control the containers that are visible in the Electric Explorer. For more information, see Create Electric Explorer Profiles.

3. In the Duct container, do either of the following:
   • Click New Digitize Duct Area to create a standalone duct area polygon.
   • Click New Create Duct Area. To generate a duct area polygon based on selected conductors.

     If you receive the message, “The geometry of the selected conductor cannot be used to create a Duct Area”, use Digitized Duct Area to create the duct.

4. Select the conductors contained in the duct. Press Enter.

   This step is optional if you chose Digitize Duct Area. If you select conductors, a relationship is created between the duct and the child conductors within the duct. If you do not want to create this relationship, press Enter to skip conductor selection.

5. Do either of the following:
   • If you clicked New Digitize Duct Area, specify the vertices of the duct area polygon. Press c to close the polygon.
   • If you clicked New Create Duct Area, specify the start and endpoints of the duct.
     Tip: Be sure to click start and end points that are on the inner sides of the two outer conductors, not the outer sides. This way the duct area can be generated around the outer sides of the conductors correctly.

     A Duct area is created using the outer conductors and the start and endpoints you specify.

6. Press ESC to complete the operation.