Does VertiGIS Studio Support Esri’s Utility Network (UN)?

Does VertiGIS Studio Support Esri’s Utility Network (UN)?

Recent questions and conversations indicate that some clarification is required.

VertiGIS Studio, on its own, does not completely support or enable the use of UN.

While it is true that the foundational elements used to represent UN, such as feature classes and other Esri layer types, can be viewed in VertiGIS Studio; UN exists to enable asset data management and network operations workflows for utilities to document and manage their network. These workflows are not fulfilled within VertiGIS Studio.

VertiGIS Studio supports the raw building blocks of the UN, but it does not provide the necessary tools, interfaces, or concepts for working with Esri’s Utility Network.

To provide some brief examples, VertiGIS Studio cannot:

• Create or work with branch versions of the UN data.
• Edit UN data while ensuring network topology.
• Validate UN topology rules against edits.
• Trace a UN network.
• Understand and display UN associations, terminals, subnetworks, and other UN-concepts.

For these use cases, and many more, you need VertiGIS Networks.

VertiGIS Networks has built upon the raw building blocks of UN support in VertiGIS Studio with 1000s of hours of relevant R&D effort to produce a complete, market-leading, web-based solution for working with Esri Utility Networks. VertiGIS Networks also offers domain packages adding even more specialized value for water, gas, and electricity utilities, with more to come.

Utility organizations can use VertiGIS Studio and VertiGIS Networks in parallel: VertiGIS Studio to deliver one or many configured web or mobile apps for a variety of the organizations needs with a variety of data models, and VertiGIS Networks to deliver utility-focused functionality like network visualization, network analysis, as-built documentation and editing, and more.

Some confusion has resulted from the occasional mention of the raw building blocks of UN support in Web release notes. Some additional confusion came from the Workflow activity pack we created to exercise and test those building blocks.

To reduce confusion:

• Requests to enhance VertiGIS Studio functionality with UN capabilities will be politely declined and the requestor pointed to VertiGIS Networks.
• We will cease to mention UN-related raw building blocks in release notes of VertiGIS Studio going forward.
• The GitHub repository with the Workflow activity pack for UN will be made private and removed from public view

In summary, if you are using or planning to use Esri’s Utility Network, you need VertiGIS Networks.