A spreadsheet works pretty well. One line per strand. Have fields at the left for details about the circuit, customer, type of optics etc. Then columns can represent footage to the splice with one column per splice. You can even represent other cables being spliced in and taking off on another route.
From: Justin Wilson Sent: Friday, April 07, 2017 4:06 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Cable documentation The line guys would do the following at the local phone company I worked out many many years ago. I am sure there are lots of better ways to do it with modern processes. The cared about a few things. Where can I find the splice points? Where can I find vaults? Where are my slack points on the path and how much is left or do I have? How do I do all this in the middle of the night during the rain? During install it was specified where the slack loops happen. They would care about the overall material used when running cable. If they ran down a road to a vault all they cared about was how much length off the spool was used. This was documented. Once everything was installed the certification notes were included in the construction closeout drawings and put in an appendix at the back of the book. The linemen did not care about such things. I typical do not see fiber being in a twisted pair type of configuration. Not sure what everyone else uses, but all the ones I pull apart are side by side. I think there is even a “how it’s made” on fiber optic cable and it has a machine that makes sure they do not get twisted. Just my .02. Justin Wilson j...@mtin.net --- http://www.mtin.net Owner/CEO xISP Solutions- Consulting – Data Centers - Bandwidth http://www.midwest-ix.com COO/Chairman Internet Exchange - Peering - Distributed Fabric On Apr 7, 2017, at 4:23 PM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com> wrote: I started a spreadsheet to document a fiber line. I figure I'll make a new file for each cable, a worksheet for notes on the cable as a whole, a worksheet for each buffer tube, and a color coded column for each fiber. Each row will be 100'. My thought was, if I have a splice enclosure 4200' down the line, I'll go down to row 42 and enter "Splice enclosure on pole 305". Then I can note on each fiber whether it passes through the enclosure, or note what it splices to, including a reference to another file if necessary. I understand they used to do something similar with 3-ring binders for mapping the pairs on phone lines. The first question I ran into was which distance do I go by: The actual distance the line has traveled The cable length, which will be ~15-20% longer due to slack loops The fiber length, which will be longer still due to the built in twist.....but is easily measurable with an OTDR. All three somehow? Is this even a smart method? Plan B is to use GIS. I can add every pole, cable, and enclosure as objects in their actual location with properties describing the actual distance, cable length, fiber length and anything else I want. That would be technically better, but I'm the only one here who can use the GIS software whereas any boob can type into a spreadsheet. If I use a Google sheet then multiple people can use the same sheets and fill them in from their phone. I'm sure these problems have been solved before, so what do you all do?
