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Exercise: Explore violations in a sample project

This exercise is a guided tour of an analyzed project that is full of violations. You won't fix anything yet — the goal is to get comfortable importing a project, running analysis, and reading the results: where violations surface, how to filter and drill into them, and how to reason about what each one is telling you. Resolving them is the job of the Module 7 mitigation exercise.

Learning objectives

By the end of this exercise you should be able to:

  • Import a Siter project from a snapshot file and run its analysis
  • Filter the project results to just the violations and navigate the results table
  • Expand a result's detail pane and read the per-pair diagnostic surfaces
  • Switch between the project-wide view and a single feature's Calculations tab
  • Form a hypothesis for why a given violation occurred and what you would do next

Prerequisites​

1. Import the sample project​

Download the sample project and import it into your environment:

Download the sample project (.siter-snapshot)

  1. Click Projects in the top navigation bar
  2. Click the settings gear on the My Projects panel and select Import (see How to import and restore projects)
  3. Select the downloaded Plattsburg Training_Module 6.siter-snapshot file
  4. Open the imported project

2. Run analysis​

  1. Click the analysis button in the toolbar and select Analyze Project (see Running an analysis)
  2. Wait for the run to complete

3. Observe the violations​

  1. Click the analysis button and select Analysis Results to open the project results panel

  2. You'll see a large number of results — and many violation lines (pairs where the actual distance is less than the required distance), both in the table and as indicators drawn between facilities on the map

tip

Set the results view to Violations to hide everything except the violating pairs — the fastest way to see the scope of the problem. See the filter views in the project results lesson.

4. Explore and diagnose​

Spend a few minutes working through the violations. The aim is not to fix them — it's to practice reading them and forming a hypothesis. For three or four different violations:

  1. Drill in from the project view. Expand a violating row to open its detail pane. Note the Required distance, the Governing Criteria, and the Exposure type (IBD, PTRD, ILD…). Use Zoom To to find the pair on the map

  2. Walk the analysis path. Open the Analysis Path for the pair and read how the engine reached its verdict (see Tracing analysis paths)

  3. Switch to the feature view. Select one of the facilities and open its Calculations tab — the same results, narrowed to just that feature as a PES (ES only facilities will have no calculations listed). Compare it to the project-wide view

  4. Form a hypothesis. Using the artifact-vs-real framing from the Violations lesson, decide what each violation most likely is, and what you would do next:

    If you see…The likely reasonProposed next step
    An IBD result between two facilities that clearly belong to the same operationThe pair is being treated as unrelatedAssign a relationship (Module 7)
    A surprisingly conservative resultA missing or wrong attribute (e.g., Heavy Wall)Correct the attribute on the feature
    A pair you expected to see, missing entirelyThe ES may be on a background layer, a feature is missing inputs, or the search zone NEW/Q is set too lowCheck the layer type, the Requires Analysis list, and the project settings
    A violation that survives a clean data reviewA real siting conflictGeometry / NEW / construction change

Jot down your reasoning for a few pairs — you'll act on conclusions like these in the Module 7 mitigation exercise.

Tips​

  • Filter to Violations. The project results view has a Violations filter that shows only the pairs where actual < required — use it to triage.
  • Two altitudes. Analysis Results can be read project-wide (the results panel) or per feature (the feature dashboard's Calculations tab). Use the project view to see scope, the feature view to focus.

Discussion​

A project full of red is not necessarily a project full of problems. Most early-stage violations are data-completeness issues — a missing relationship, a wrong attribute, a feature on the wrong layer — not real siting conflicts. The skill this exercise builds is triage: read each violation, form a hypothesis about whether it's an artifact or real, and queue the cheapest correct fix. You'll do the fixing in Module 7.