Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, and welcome to this webinar on Comsofiber 24.2. My name is Jeroen, I'm the Product Manager for Comsofiber and I'll be talking to you guys through the new features that are available in this new release. And the release date was last month back in December 24, but we chose to postpone the webinar a little bit to the beginning of the year to make sure that people are not in the holiday mood and can attend this webinar with their full attention. So if I move to the next slide, this one shows the new features of ComsofFiber 24.2. I'll be going over these in the presentation. And this is a brief introduction. The first three features on the slide have to do with ducts. So this really gives the user a higher ability to influence the duct design to a higher extent. I'll be showing this in a couple of demos as well, what the actual result is, but it really allows users to control ducts much more than before. Then number four is the reuse of existing cable from network managers telecom. So with the acquisition of Comsof two years ago, almost three years ago by IQGEO, we've started integration of ComsofFiber and network managers telecom. And I'll be showing the reuse of existing cables from network manager platform in a Comsof Fiber calculation. And lastly, we also made work of a description to workflow for large area designs. I will also be telling that in a bit more detail at the end of the slide deck. So let's get started with duct clustering. What is it all about? So previous to this release, the creation of ducts by Comsofiber is or was done in a cost optimized way that had little user input. So users couldn't really say to a large extent this duct needs to be done there. There are some features which I will discuss in a bit that you could say specifically here, I need a certain ducts, but it's that was more on specific streets or specific smaller areas of the network. And the duct clustering allows this to be more high level. And for any user that has worked with Comsof Fiber, you all know that clusters are pretty important. You can do quite a lot with these polygons and the duct clustering is a new type of object that allows more control. So any calculation that Comsofiber produces from 24.2 all nodes will contain duct clusters. These are automatically generated and they cover the points of the lower layer for which cables are put into the same duct. So for example, a distribution duct cluster will cover all of the drop points that are together grouped into one single duct or a duct structure. This is visualized by these polygons and very similar to the already existing cluster objects. So the standard layer clusters and cable clusters. It's a mechanism that we have now extended to work with ducts as well. This gives the user full control of which aggregation points are combined, as I'll be showing in a minute. And it works for all layers, except in the bonds for drop distribution, feeder primary distribution and so on. If there are ducts in that layer, the clusters are generated. So this image already shows an example. It's as mentioned, a polygon that's generated automatically. It can be edited by standard GIS functionality. functionality so either QGIS, RJS or network manager allows to change these polygons and then once they are locked the next calculation by Composite Fiber will take these modifications into account and make sure that the next calculation respects this duct structure or duct cluster and place the ducts according to these polygons so let me show this a bit more in detail in a demonstration so looking at QGIS as an example this is a very big distribution cluster that has a number of the clusters in there so first clean up the interface a bit to make sure that the right data is being shown hiding the distribution cluster and then showing the duct clusters so these are now visualized you see that there are three big clusters I want to the north and then to the south this shows that all of these points are contained in a single duct architecture then looking at the ducts themselves such as it's shown here it has an attribute that shows the duct cluster on the right hand side you can see that that has a certain number corresponding to the cluster a number of the cluster so we can see on the ducts to which cluster it belongs and as mentioned it is possible to modify this these clusters so let me show that if the cluster for example to the right hand side needs to be changed a bit you want to have one single ducts to the street to the south and then another one to the street that's just above it I've just qualified this cluster and then I will now lock it this locking is necessary to make sure that comes of fiber knows it needs to respect that cluster and then in an next calculation the area that is now not covered with any duct cluster as usual comfort fiber will generate a new cluster for that so let me start this calculation should be relatively quick because the area is not that big and I have locked a lot of objects in this specific application you should take about only a couple of seconds before we get to the results and well what I would expect to see is that there is well the cluster that was locked still needs to be there of course because that is the input and I'm giving to a compressor fiber but a new duct cluster should be created to the north of the one that is locked so looking at this view you can see that the cluster to the south is as expected to the one that I as input but there is a new cluster created to the north of it and then you can look at the attributes of these the clusters so you can see that each cluster has a different attribute the cluster corresponding to the actual ID of the actual ID of the cluster so this is the way that you can link ducts to clusters to IDs and then make sure that it's it's as you would like it as a user it allows a lot of flexibility and you can already specify to come fiber how you want to see that and then looking to the distribution point and whatever or the objects going to the south there are two ducts there separate from one another because the duct clusters that these cables end up it are separate as well so that was the duct clustering the next big feature that was implemented is the possibility to disable duct tapering again it has to do with ducts as I mentioned in the beginning of the webinar so duct creation was mostly done in a cost optimized way that means that typically smaller ducts are cheaper so the further you're going to the network further away you go from the cabinet or central office the smaller the ducts the smaller ducts will be that comes from the fiber chooses because less cables are needed so it results in smaller smaller smaller ducts that is what we call tapering it comes to fiber will choose smaller ducts because that is more cost efficient but in some cases that is not not desired and a couple of examples on slide here why would you want to disable that because there would be more more spare capacity deeper in the network that means that yeah if there are additional houses or additional clients to be connected further away from your cabinets or central locations you would already have tubes available there that provide capacity less drill head changes when using direction drilling and you can keep on using the same type of ducts then it's always the same diameter of drill that you need so there are less change needed in that during the deployment and lastly fewer truck rolls because more the same type of ducts will be needed and less switches between types of ducts and less switches between the same type of ducts and more than one with 18 or a duct of size 18 and all this main branch duct type will not change in the entirety so up until the last point the same type of ducts will be used but and that's an important bit on this data duct tapering on the side branches there is this possible to change to another type of ducts because otherwise you would just have one single type of duct over the whole network which is also not what we want so it's a mechanism that works reversibly on each side branch the same method applies the main branch is identified there and it's the ducts placed are going to the furthest point with high capacity and if it's if the criteria isn't the size then the longest distance is being used as you can see here on the right hand side bottom figure so this is the mechanism that will say which branches get the same types of ducts but it can always be overruled by the use of duct glasses which is a feature that has been in constant fiber for quite some time that you can on specific streets or ages say this is the duct that needs to be placed so that's all the theory behind it let's look at an example this is again qjs and i have calculation ready as shown here which is the standard way of working so here duct tapering will happen let me zoom in a bit to the actual situation and on each of the pieces of duct you see the size of the ducts so we have ducts of size 24 and you see at the end that we only have ducts of size 2 remaining so as mentioned this is the standard behavior not anything you need to do to get this functionality or to get this result but let's look at an the different example where the different example where the different example where the duct tapering is actually activated I'm here using the state manager to load the calculated state and switch to the rules to show where this feature can be activated so in any layer where ducts are created there is a tab ducts as shown here and then at the bottom of this page there is a checkbox disabled ducts tapering so in this specific case it has been activated then looking at the result of this setting so let's go back to the place that I just showed to the south of the green distribution point so again we have the 24 24 ducts 24 size ducts going to the south and at the first D branch there is on the right hand side of the street the 24 going to the end because this is the longest branch with the highest capacity and then the smaller one gets a duct of size 6 as mentioned this is the side branch that has an well its own choice of duct that's just efficient to host all the cables provided then let's look at the example where duct glasses are needed or are used just a second getting the right slide in place yeah so this is the one if you look at the street on the right hand side you see that all ducts of size 12 have been placed and let's show the duct laws related to this specific trench that is the must be 24 so for now that's a bit of a misnamer because at first I selected all of the ducts to be possible on the specific duct class so this is what's showing the rules 24 12 6 and 2 slot ducts are available or possible for this class so I'm modifying it in this specific setting saving the rules and then going to rerun that calculation so this was the previous results all of the ducts of size 12 and your calculation will now look at this updated duct class updated duct class says well it needs to be ducts of size 24 and that's it that is taken to account during the calculation so giving it a minute to run through and first of all after the calculation a warning is shown because even though duct tapering was disabled in the rules duct tapering has happened and as it says in the warning it can be caused by the clauses or capacity constraints so this is a first indication to the user that the there is something happening and if it's normal or not that's up to the user to decide in this specific case it's expected because I really set that the clause you see here the here that even though there's a duct of size 12 go to the right hand side whatever goes down is the 24 size ducts as specified by that that's the class so the class is overruling the ducts tapering disabling and really allows users to go for a specific duct on a specific piece on the switch so this is always the last resort to say I need certain ducts on a certain place in the network and moving on to feature number three that's the clustering on micro duct capacity so we added the ability to define micro duct constraints on cabinets manholes and handles to say there needs to be a certain amount or there is a possible certain amount of ducts there and there is an option to choose either between all micro ducts or only the used ones and important to note that this is an post calculation check so it won't actually change the clusters but it alerts a user if the constraint is kept or violated and this allows you to change the design to make sure that this is really as you would expect it I don't have a video on that because it's quite straightforward then we added a couple of improvements to the rules so the we already did quite a lot of work in the 4.1 to update user experience in the user interface but we went a bit further still for example the labeling tab can now be hidden other changes all their optimization settings can also be hidden if it's not applicable reducing the complexity of the user interface and making sure that users can really find their way navigating around the design rules so we have to do this in the user interface and then we come to the user interface and then we come to the last big feature that I'll show in the demo that's the reuse of existing cables from network manager telecom so prior to this release we were not yet able to support the existing cable brain fields data from network managers to be reused and that this has now been implemented in the integrated version of comsov fiber within network manager telecom telecom so let me show that in detail so this interface is slightly different before demos were shown in qgis this is network manager telecom another iqg product so let me zoom in a bit and show that starting out there is an existing cable this cable has fiber count 24 meaning that there are 24 fibers available for other network calculations so it's an important thing to know that the cable needs to start in the manhole so that's what was on the left hand side and on the right hand side as well so the cable is a connection between manholes that are placed on certain points in the in the network and as with any workflow using the workflow using the network using the console fiber in this needs to be done in the design we're not working on the master database but in a specific design and then in the workspace you can see on the left hand side that this is using the console fiber 24.2 version and we're in the initial stages of a design we're also checking the rules to make sure that the reuse of existing cables is activated so the rules are the same as you would have in the qjs and then let's scroll down to the point where you can say that fibers from existing cables should be reused so this is the checkbox in the feeder layer in this case where you want to have it reused so saving this rule this rule set will bring us back to the main interface another couple of things that need to happen so in this dialog that controls all the console fiber operations there's a couple of things that need to happen so first of all we need to populate the data and making sure that all the data is made available for console fiber and then there's a couple of pre-process operations that are very similar to the ones done in QJS the important thing here is that the generator transitions is activated because transitions will be generated between the manholes which were just shown and any existing trenches or other network objects near the manholes so an existing cable as such can be connected to this needs to be done via transitions which is this why this step is important so once this has finished let's look a bit more in detail to the actual results zooming in a bit to the cable that you are just looking at and now a new line will be created a new transition between the existing manhole and the cable and then the trench on the side so this will allow cables that are newly deployed by console fiber in the trenches to be connected to those manholes and the cable starts so this is the case for all the manholes and of course this has been automatically generated by console fiber that will check everything is connected if for example you would have existing cables that are not connected to the network this is where you would get a warning saying nodes are not connected to the network please investigate and fix that or say you're okay with it and this is typically shown in the log file after this operation but in this case everything went and fine and then the next two steps that is the acquire license and calculate which will now be started so during calculation as we set in the rules we set in the rules that existing cables can be reused so these cables are accessible and console fiber will avoid new trenching because there is an existing cable on that specific spot that can be reused and of course an existing cable is always cheaper than creating new trenches and new cables so let's look at the result of this the right layers are active yeah it's it's always useful to look at the warnings and errors but in this case warnings and errors don't have anything to do with the existing cables so that's it's fine and it had to do with the drop links that were too long so nothing serious uh looking again at this spot where we had an existing cable so you see there is cable there that's called existing so this is all fine uh this is a placeholder that um shows exactly this game that's being reused and then looking a bit more to the left hand side there is an existing a new cable there of type underground to the right hand side as well so in between there is no other cable than this existing one meaning that all of the connectivity from the left to the right hand side of this network area is being taken care of by the existing cable so this is really um cost efficient because any cables that are there can be reused fibers are spliced manhole is uh uh used as a place to put those splices and this allows from the source data in network managers to export existing cable functionality to comes fiber reuse it and bring it back in again so this is quite uh useful and then the last big thing that we did for the 24.2 release is the creation of a workflow description for large area design so before this release there wasn't a real clear path to go from a large field design to individual smaller distribution designs and with large i'm talking about several tens of thousands of demand points and how to cut that up into smaller distribution um pieces so distribution designs and this is very useful uh if you want to use if you want to have different people create designs uh side by side or roll out the spread out over time so you don't want you don't necessarily want to have the bigger design you want to go into smaller ones and we've now created a document describing this workflow uh to go from a large feeder design to several smaller distribution designs uh it's it is applicable on the integrated version of console fiber similar to the last demo i showed and as mentioned it it improves collaboration and ease of working with large data or large areas then to uh finish up with the uh new items in 24.2 there's a couple of technical items and improvements that have happened so first of all we improved the workflow in fact with comes of cloud so that's the platform where uh calculations can be sent off to and that you don't need to worry about the um calculations on your desktop or laptop but everything is taken care of on the cloud hosted platform um we increased security performance and and the interactions in general so that's a good step forward also a couple of libraries underneath the hood that need upgrading and these are angular and not these were updated and we also keep on working on the cdif improvement so cdif that's the interchange format of data between comes of fiber and attack manager telecom there we did a couple of improvements um mainly to do with efficiency so uh reducing the cdif final size and improving the import performance then a couple of other things that yeah were necessary to make sure that the cdif um can keep on improving and can keep up with the other features that that happen so this was the overview of everything we've done for 24.2 um then i'll finish up with uh and look to the future and the work that currently is happening by the uh comes from the development teams so comes for 25.1 is targeted for q2 of this year what will you what will we be releasing at that time so first of all breakout structures uh this is the functionality where uh you can create doubled structures for example and a manhole on the manhole on the street and then the cabinet a bit removed uh on the side where ducts would terminate in the manhole and all the splices would be put in the cabinet a bit from the uh removed on the street so in a more safe location with less chance of getting run over for example making sure that there is a higher level of security in your design and also a more realistic modeling of structures cables and dots second bullet that we'll be focusing on our second big feature is performance so benchmarks we will have a couple of descriptions of typical workspace sizes uh and and configurations and then related run-through times uh likely on console clouds because that's platform we have most in that we have most control of and looking at these benchmarks the goal is to have a lot of performance improvements as well uh because we should know where the most time consuming activities are and and get better in performance in those pieces uh we will continue working on improving of the console fiber network managers telecom integration in terms of stability usability and a couple of client feedback that we will put in there and of course lastly we continue improving the data interchange format and then various bug fixes and usability improvements so that about wraps it up for the presentation of 24.2 and um look forward to 25.1 so as uh mentioned in the chat um questions are welcome i've got a couple here ready if there's anything else please uh put them in the chat or send them afterwards to uh to our team we're happy to help so the first question i have is how can i get the new comes of fiber release um this is as usual from the comes of area also fiber area license server this is the platform that is hosted online that contains all of the new releases and normally every registered users will have had an update that this version was released back in december if you didn't receive link or if you or if you don't have access to this platform please create a support ticket and my colleagues in the support team will be happy to help you further so that's where you can get the actual version uh to be used on your own computer um and then looking at the questions there was a second one with regards to duct clustering uh so um the question is which other objects need to be locked because i've talked about the duct clustering uh and the fact that these objects need to be locked and there is a certain dependency on other objects that need to be locked so for sure what other items need to be locked is everything in the lower layer uh so that would be the lower layer points and clusters uh because in the end as usual clusters cover points that are uh in in other layers in the network and everything that is underneath there needs to be fixed because if for example draw points would move about and you have locked the duct clusters then the results are not very predictable so as usual the recommendation is if you are locking features start from the lower layer and work your way upwards so if you want to use the clusters on distribution layer for example the drop layer needs to be locked completely that is clusters and points fully locked and also on the layer itself so in my example distribution cluster would also need to be locked to make sure that uh it's not interfering with the duct clusters and then the second bit of information i can give there is that if a shared cable is being used then there will be cable clusters as well um it's recommended to lock these uh as well but we do have a couple of um safe guards in place to make sure that this is come this is executed correctly because there is a dependency between the two if you have a cable cluster then a ductless always needs to be bigger than that because cables that are serving the same points will always be in the same duct so there is a um definitely a correlation between duct cable clusters that is checked by the uh software itself when executing and is also described quite well in the manual that we always release with every new version right that's about all i had uh for you today please if you have any further questions uh please send those through you'll be happy to answer and i thank you for your presence and attendance at the webinar have a good day