Good morning, all.
Anyone else out there editing parcels in fabric? We've uploaded the entire county into parcel fabric (well, actually, bigger brains than I handled that; I'm merely an editor) and now I am, along with others, tasked with entering new deed data/surveys as they come in. We have been using Parcel Editor tools to do so.
It's taken a while to get used to, but the concept of using join links rather than the old CAD-like intersection/trim tools in 9.3 is taking hold. I've been using this 10.1 system since February, but to tell you the truth I'd almost kill to be able to have my old 9.3 tools back. I used to be able, at the very least, to create line segments, parallel offsets, and partial curves without having to close a polygon first. Parcel fabric wants nice neat closed polygons to join in the fabric. There are construction tools, but fabric will not allow free-standing lines or curves that would represent dangles when joined.
As I am using the traverse tools to construct new/replacement parcels, it some times becomes necessary to "fudge" adjacent parcels using best-guesswork. When in doubt, I must research deed data on adjacent parcels, which can be a pain, so I use whatever information I can find before doing that digging. Some times merely constructing one or two parcel calls (as opposed to reconstructing the entire parcel) on adjacent parcels is all I need.
In the case of needing, say, two calls for an adjacent parcel, I've wound up drawing the two calls in Construction, then closing it as a triangle with a bogus third call just to complete the closure. It creates a bogus parcel, which I then join, link, and subsequently delete the bogus parcel after joining. Kinda going around the block to go next door, but it works.
I guess the purpose of this long-winded post is to ask the question: what are your opinions on join links as a concept?
Does it mess with your head as much as it does mine? I mean, I've been drawing geometric objects as far back as I could first pick up a crayon.
The whole concept of two-dimensional objects agreeing with one another was something I picked up very young. Circles, angles, patterns- they all came to me easily.
But join links present a serious problem when it comes to curves. The radius point on a curve is a join link. The traverse window creates the curve/arc, but it also creates the two radials and the center point of the "circle" where the radials meet is that join link.
I recently redrew six adjacent panhandles, each 10 feet wide. The panhandles each had an arc, and with the 10-foot panhandle width, the curve radius increased 10 feet as they were built.
My problem was that, in using construction, the parcels were built from the western corner of the "anchor" parcel, and the radius calls were way over in the east. When I went to join the parcel line work into the fabric, the radius points for the panhandles were scattered. In other words, not coincident, like six separate circle centers. This is a product of the metes and bounds precision being restricted to degrees, minutes, and seconds. As an angle, that would convert to so many decimal places. In smaller parcels such coincident radii might actually be the same join point. But I'm drawing 10+ acre parcels with panhandles about 1/4 mile long, so the error of precision adds up the bigger you get. It seems I should be able to reset tolerances somewhere.
When joining parcels in parcel fabric, if just one link is missed or misaligned, the fabric will not "snap" together, that is, there are small gaps between parcels. What I've seen is that line links will come unconnected at random if just one join link is missed. The problem? This includes radius links.
When they don't align/coincide, line links elsewhere (in my case, anywhere within the eleven parcels I rejoined when redrawing the six panhandles and their surrounding "neighbor" parcels) will randomly disappear.
I've been joining, rejoining, reconstructing, and joining again for three days now, to no avail. The radius links simply will not join each other.
I've decided that I'm going to live with small slivers- the gaps between parcels that missing line links create.
I apologize for the lengthy post. I realize not many people are using Parcel Fabric for an entire county's database as yet, but I was just wondering if anyone has experienced the weirdness/voodoo that is joining links in parcel fabric. 🙂