Import data with Area Select

Area Select gives you the base data for your project without having to prepare it yourself. Draw or upload a boundary around your area, and FOND imports the data inside it from its own database.

What data is available

FOND’s database covers the USA and Canada and includes three datasets:

Dataset	What it is	How FOND uses it
Addresses	Points for each premises, derived from land parcel data	The locations to be served
Parcels	Land parcel boundaries	As described above, parcels are used to derive addresses. Design projects: Parcels are used to generate other layers, such as dual sided underground path, leadins, and service area boundaries.
Street centerlines	The center line of each street	Fiber Planner: Imported as underground path, the routes where cable can be laid, or used to generate aerial poles and spans. Design projects: Used to generate other layers, such as dual sided underground path, aerial poles spans, and service area boundaries.

Dataset

What it is

How FOND uses it

Addresses

Points for each premises, derived from land parcel data

The locations to be served

Parcels

Land parcel boundaries

As described above, parcels are used to derive addresses.

Design projects: Parcels are used to generate other layers, such as dual sided underground path, leadins, and service area boundaries.

Street centerlines

The center line of each street

Fiber Planner: Imported as underground path, the routes where cable can be laid, or used to generate aerial poles and spans.

Design projects: Used to generate other layers, such as dual sided underground path, aerial poles spans, and service area boundaries.

Which datasets you can import depends on the project type.

Note that in some projects you can also use area select to import Aerial span and poles. Unlike the three datasets above, which are sourced from data vendors and trusted open-source data providers, FOND's aerial span and poles are a purely generated dataset. They are created from FOND's street centerline data and are intended to be used as an approximation of an aerial network for users who do not have their own data to load into FOND.

Open Area Select

In the Input data step of the design tools, open the menu for the layer you want to populate, and choose Area Select. Area Select is available for these layers, depending on the project type:

Addresses
Parcels
Streets or underground path
Poles and spans

Choose your area

You have three ways to set the boundary for your import.

Draw a new polygon

Choose Draw new polygon.
Move the map to your area. Zoom in with your mouse or trackpad, or use the search bar to jump to an address or place. Clicking the map starts drawing, but you can still click and drag to pan.
As you zoom in, FOND shows the data in its database: parcels first, then addresses and street centerlines as you get closer. Use these to place your boundary precisely around the area you want.
Click to add each vertex of your polygon. Double-click, or press Enter, to finish.

On the zoomed-out map, you'll see the map of the USA mostly lit up, as well as much of Canada. The light sections of the map have both addresses and street centerlines. Dark sections in the USA and Canada have only street centerlines.

To adjust a polygon after you’ve drawn it, click it to select it, then drag its corners. You can also add new corners along its edges.

Upload a polygon

Choose Upload polygon to use a boundary you already have, such as a service area or a permit boundary. The file must contain a polygon or multipolygon and meet the Input data requirements.

Use an existing polygon

If you’ve already used Area Select for another layer in this project, choose Use existing polygon to reuse the same boundary. You don’t need to draw or upload it again.

Choose what to import

Once your polygon is set, FOND fetches the data inside it. Along with the layer you started from, you can usually import other datasets for the same area at the same time. For example, you might start from addresses and also import streets and parcels, depending on the project type.

Select the datasets you want, then click Import to load your data onto the map.

Using different polygons for different layers

You don’t have to use the same boundary for every layer. For example, you might want addresses only inside several separate areas, but streets covering a larger area so the network can connect those areas. In that case, use one polygon for addresses and a larger one for streets.