Initialize Gas Trace Weights

The Initialize Gas Trace Weights function prepares a new database for gas tracing. It populates the trace weight field (the field assigned the field model name GASTRACEWEIGHT) with a trace weight value for all features in the GasDataset. The trace weight values store important information about each feature in an efficient bitgate format, ready for use by ArcFM traces. More information about bitgates is provided in the Appendix > Bitgate Fields topic.

Before You Begin

There are several prerequisites before running this tool:

• This tool is part of the configuration to set up gas tracing. Thus, ensure you have performed the previous five configuration steps before running this tool. Visit Configure Gas Tracing in the Configuration Guide to see all previous steps.

• Ensure your MaxLocksPerFile Registry settings are high values (200,000 for example). A low setting causes errors during initialization. You can set this value two ways:

  • You can change this setting using the Advanced ArcMap Settings, which by default is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.6\Utilities.

    

  • You can directly change the values in the Registry. Depending on your system version, there are three MaxLocksPerFile entries in the Registry at the following locations:

    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\3.5\Engines\Jet 3.5\

    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 3.x\

    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 4.0\

• If possible, initialize trace weights before the dataset has been registered as versioned. If you choose to initialize trace weights on a dataset with versions, you could potentially encounter thousands of conflicts. If the dataset is already registered as versioned, consult with your database administrator and delete any versions and unregister the dataset as versioned. Refer to Esri documentation Unregistering Data as Versioned for more information.

• The Initialize Gas Trace Weights function makes some assumptions about the database design; if that design deviates from the ArcFM standard database design in some key ways then it may be necessary to develop a customized version of the function.

You can use the Initialize Gas Trace Weights function before or after creating a geometric network. However, it is recommended that you run Initialize Gas Trace Weights before creating the geometric network because the initialization process will go quicker. Running this function after creating a geometric network can be very slow.

Using the Tool

How to run the tool depends on database setup. Visit the Configuration Guide topic Configure Gas Tracing > Initialize Gas Trace Weights to read how to run the tool.