Parcel editing

[RussToelke]

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. 🙂

[RussToelke]

I am someone who is more used to editing lines by trimming, extending, intersection, and all the other various CAD-type drawing tools. It was a transition back 15 years ago when I first started doing things on the computer as opposed to hand-drawing, but my early AutoCAD and subsequent Arc 9.3 experiences eventually sunk in. It had become second nature (although Arc never really seemed to grasp the entire AutoCAD drawing suite).
I appreciate that most Arc drawing is done by digitizing. It does that well.
However, when trying to use precision tools to create plane geometry (the times I use plane geometry are mostly for mere reference and I don't need a closed polygon), whether by metes and bounds or simply drawing portions of arcs and lines, Arcmap 10.1 seems to come up short.
The problems I'm having with our data set in rejoining radius points are infuriating to say the least. Our imported data was manuscripted years ago, and some radii leave much to be desired. Subdivisions can be a nightmare, with radius join links scattered all over the screen.
In my experience, when joining a parcel into Fabric, missing just one link (or joining it wrong) will cause other links to become unjoined anywhere in the fabric and anywhere in any layer within parcels the join links have touched. And this includes radius points. Miss one, and Heaven help you when trying to find the missing link. It will wander and you have to hunt it down, rejoin, and hope you caught the straggler.

From someone who transitioned well from the simple pleasure of seeing linework emerge from pencil and paper to the emulation of same in the computer world, I see join links as a complete diversion from that normal progression.
In fact, if I may, I highly recommend using Parcel Fabric link-joining alongside waterboarding and force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay. Those boys would talk, and quickly.
In other words, ESRI, would you please consider using topology building like you had in 9.3? Every fabric layer I've seen contains closed polygons. What was wrong with merging regions? If a polygon wasn't closed, it wouldn't merge. Simple concept.
It wasn't broke, and you fixed it.

[RussToelke]

Has anyone else noticed how laggy this software is? It always takes a few seconds for it to react to any input. I find myself pushing the same button again many times, wondering whether it even realized I'd pushed it the first time, only to have to use the "undo" button after it finally catches up. Kinda frustrating. An hourglass or something would be better than nothing.

[RussToelke]

Radius points as join links must be rethought by ESRI.
Must.
I realize that by joining they keep curves coincident and eliminate gaps, but at the same time they are not a parcel metes and bounds call.
First off, getting any kind of idea just which radius point belongs to which parcel/polygon is voodoo at best, root canal at worst. The visuals provided by ESRI here are sketchy. When joining/rejoining, especially on large radii over several hundred feet, it is nigh impossible to determine which of the gobbledegook of grey lines belongs to which polygon. And you can only see the radial as a visual when the entirety of the radial is on the screen. In other words, when zooming in to the radius/radii center point, the grey radial lines and join link "dots" disappear. (I have been using the magnifier and Viewer Windows, but they often misbehave.) I realize problems are due to the data input by the customer/user, but as I have explained earlier, I created panhandles with coincident radius points using ESRI's traverse tools in the Parcel Details window, and the radius points still scattered all over. Unless user data is meticulously scrutinized when migrated to Parcel Fabric, there will be scattered radius points in any migration. I don't care how accurate the previous editing software was before migration, when using pi in calculations for radius points, there is no software on Earth that will have tolerance settings to calculate the infinite decimal places inherent in pi. And there are railroad curves that call out radii in the five-figure range, 10,000 feet and more, some with several dozen abutting parcels sharing common radius calls.
The thing to do is to pick a controlling radius point and, one by one, rejoin surrounding polygons/parcels to the control.
Root.
Canal.
Please, Powers That Be, take the radius point concept to the next, user-friendly level. Let me make one exception, somehow, I don't care how you do it, to the voodoo that is joining links, and allow multiple points to be joined to one controlling join link at one time.
I'm about to claim disability from insanity.

[RussToelke]

Ah, well, this thread seems to be languishing. I see views but no responses. Looks like I don't have any compadres out there doing wide scale parcel editing in Parcel Fabric, but I at least have readers. 🙂
At the risk of having this thread fade away I continue to add thoughts and perhaps am becoming a little passive-aggressive, but in lieu of conversation I guess I'll take that risk while talking to myself.
In redrawing, joining, and otherwise fully enjoying the voodoo that is Parcel Fabric /insert sarcasm smiley/, I've come to the same realization I'd had while editing in Arc 9.3: that is, user-friendliness is not even a concept on ESRI's editing software programmers' radar screen, at least for the parcel editing I do. It some times occurs to me that a handful of clueless homeless people could actually once hit on something halfway intuitive when writing an editing program, even with no idea what they were doing. Kinda like the proverbial monkeys banging at a typewriter eventually typing out the works of Shakespeare, y'know?
My experiences with ESRI software have left me with the distinct paranoid impression that someone is deliberately making this stuff as counter-intuitive as possible.
With that little bit of ranting over, I ask you this: is there any forum or feedback channel where I could actually suggest changes?

[RussToelke]

I gotta be honest. If I were to take myself from today back in a time machine to show the Past Me what lay ahead, I think Past Me would have thought about a completely different career. Auto mechanic, maybe. Something where the whole suite of tools doesn't change concepts overnight.