Create a New Design

Typically, designs are assigned to you via your company’s WMS. They come pre-packaged in a Work Request.

However, there are situations where you want to do some quick design work without going through the WMS. For example,

• You are on site speaking with a customer, and you need to do some quick sketches to demonstrate something.

• Whether on site or in the office, you want to sketch out some “what if” scenarios that are not going to be a comprehensive design.

• You need a discardable sandbox for ad hoc design work, but it’s not associated with any particular project.

For these situations and more, you can create a new design directly within the application.

• A new design does not come with a Work Request. But, later it can be assigned to one.

• A new design remains locally saved on your machine until it is assigned to a Work Request. It is not being backed up on your company’s server while in the local state. Thus, if the intent is eventually push the local design through your company’s WMS, we recommend getting it assigned to a Work Request as soon as possible. This ensures your design is backed up in case something happens to your local machine.

• Since the design is local, some functions are not available such as re-assigning it to another designer or some of your company’s workflow tasks that require a hosted connection.

• Thus, these designs are best suited for the examples above. Comprehensive design work should still originate from your company’s WMS to have full functionality.

To create a new, local design, follow these steps:

1. Under the Search field, click Create.

   

2. In the Create Local Design dialog, populate the fields.

   • Name: This is a required field. It can be renamed later, if necessary.

   • Utility Domain: Choose either Gas or Electric.

   • Customer: This is an optional field for customer information.

   • Location: If you have an address, partial address, general location, or XY coordinates (in decimal degrees in the format of Latitude, Longitude), you can enter it here.

     • If you the check the box “Try to create design at this location,” the application uses the location you entered to determine the map extent of the upcoming design. It also zooms and pans to that map extent. In other words, if you enter a specific street address, it zooms to that address. If you enter a city and state, it zooms to that city and state.

     • If you leave the location empty and still check the box, the application uses the current map extent (wherever the map is currently located on the Design tab) to create the design location.

     • If you leave the location empty and uncheck the box, the application does not try to associate a map extent to the design. In that case, you personally zoom and pan to the correct location when you initially open the design.

     • If you type a location but uncheck the box, the location is saved as an attribute with the design, but the application does not zoom or pan to the location itself. The address is saved, but it is not used in any way by the map itself.

   • Design Notes: This is a free text field to add information you want. These notes can be edited later.

3. Click Create.

You should see your new design in your list.

At this point, you can double-click it to open, and proceed with your work. Keep the following points in mind:

• Because you created this design locally, it does not have a Work Request associated with it from your company’s WMS. Thus, the placeholder Work Request is called “Local Work.” This name cannot be changed.

• As you work and save, all edits are being saved to your local machine. They are not connected to your company’s WMS. This means some functions are not available, such as re-assigning it to a different designer or some of you company’s workflow tasks that require a hosted connection.

  • As stated before, if the intent is to ultimately push this design through your company’s workflow, we recommend associating it to a Work Request as soon as possible.