Irrigation Equipment or Components Connecting Automatically

Issue

Two or more irrigation components in your drawing are connecting automatically, even though they are not actually connected. This issue can apply to:

• Heads (sprinklers)
• Valves
• Auxiliary equipment
• Points of connection (P.O.C.s)
• Drip equipment

Cause

This issue typically results from copying irrigation equipment that is already piped. When you copy piped equipment, all data associated with that equipment, including the system of pipe connected to it, is copied with the equipment. Thus, if you copy a piece of piped equipment, the system will think the copied piece of equipment is still connected to the area from which you copied it. 

This is why you should never copy and paste irrigation equipment once you have piped to it.

Solution

To avoid this issue in the future, never copy irrigation equipment that has already been piped. Instead, use the Irrigation Manager to place heads, valves, and auxiliary equipment, and use our Source Data tool to place additional P.O.C.s.

Open our Highlight Station tool, and click one of the problematic components. If you see multiple areas light up in yellow, you'll know where the problem lies.

From this point, you'll need to start eliminating portions of your system design until Highlight Station finally stops highlighting both areas.

Open our Move Piped Equipment tool, and click a valve in one of the affected areas.

Now select another valve that's connected to that first valve you selected. If pipes start popping in and moving around, and then disappearing, there's a good chance you have copied piped equipment.

Here's another example, where our Move Piped Equipment tool was used on a piece of mainline equipment suspected of being copied. Note that sections of mainline extend out of the intended plan to other pieces of mainline equipment, which is a good indicator that the equipment was copied after being piped to, and all equipment the mainline pipe is connecting has also been copied.

To address the issue:

1. Using our Delete Station tool, delete all copied equipment.

2. Delete any pipe that had been connected to the equipment.

3. Place the deleted equipment fresh from the Irrigation Manager or by using our Clone Equipment tool.

4.Redraw all deleted pipe.

5. Continue with your irrigation design, repeating steps 1 through 4 if you find any further cloned equipment.

Keep using our Highlight Station and Move Piped Equipment tools to locate problem areas, and repeat these steps until you've corrected the issue throughout your drawing.