idea Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

cmathers — Thu, 29 May 2025 20:47:47 GMT

I do not maintain parcel data and do not need to use the Parcel Fabric for my work but frequently deal with surveys none the less. It would be helpful to be able to use the COGO Reader tool outside of the Parcel Fabric to scan a deed and push the result into the normal Traverse tool.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

GordonCourtney — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 16:24:43 GMT

Please consider having this tool outside of the fabric. We have multiple people in my organization that would benefit from this, but we have no need for a parcel fabric as we do not map assessment parcels. @AmirBar-Maor

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

CFMGIS — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 16:25:50 GMT

This would be extrememly useful for those that have a need to run legal descriptions but have no need for the fabric!

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 09:07:06 GMT

@GordonCourtney @CFMGIS

COGO Reader is designed for parcels of any kind (lots, subdivisions, tax parcels, ROWs...) that are based on a metes-and-bounds legal description.

The parcel fabric controls simple feature classes and has many benefits for cadastre / land records:

Every feature is associated to the legal record it came from
Historic parent parcels are created when parcels are split / merged
Parcel Lineage is maintained and can be depicted to support chain of title research
Dedicated tools that save you time
Quality capabilities that can be configured to help you evaluate your data + tools that help you fix common issues
Easy to migrate and deploy on a file GDB or ArcGIS Enterprise
many more...

So what keeps your organization from migrating to the parcel fabric? Is it because your organization still uses GIS software as a drafting tool (like CAD)? Or reluctant to adopt a web service-based architecture and improve collaboration between departments and stakeholders?

Given that it takes minutes

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

GordonCourtney — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 12:05:24 GMT

@AmirBar-Maor Thank you so much for your response. The Parcel Fabric is very valuable and our property appraiser office does use the Parcel Fabric; however, I am part of separate organization that verifies and maps legal descriptions for a different purpose other than mapping lots, subdivisions, tax parcels, and ROWs.

The new COGO Reader tool is amazing and we plan to use it regardless just to map the descriptions and then paste into a COGO line outside of a fabric, but it would be great if it is made available outside of the Fabric. I have multiple users in my organization that will benefit from this amazing tool; however, none of us map legal descriptions for lots, subdivisions, or ROWs that would benefit using the Parcel Fabric.

I look forward to attending some sessions at the UC and speaking with some of the team to see if it will ever be considered outside of the Parcel fabric as this new tool is beneficial to all of us that need to verify and map legal descriptions for a wide variety of reasons.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

CFMGIS — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 12:05:16 GMT

Good morning,

I understand that the COGO Reader is designed for parcels. However, my organization is not responsible for maintaining parcels in the traditional sense (lots, subdivisions, tax parcels). My organization is responsible for maintaining zoning, future land use, special development areas, etc. using ArcGIS Pro. Given that the Parcel Fabric can manipulate the polygon geometry, this is not well suited for individuals that need view the mapped legally described boundaries as they truly are. Nor is it beneficial for organizations that have a need to run spatial queries against these polygons (E.g. to determine the FEMA flood zone) as doing so may generate false negatives or false positives, adversely impacting the development and other processes, costing customers and staff valuable time and money.

The point being made here is that this is an opportunity for ESRI to provide its customers with a useful/ time saving tool in the simplest way without forcing them to implement something that they may not need/want (prior experience with parcel fabric has taught me to be very leery of it). We are simply asking for a tool that can read and map metes-and-bounds legal descriptions without having to develop a fabric and all that entails.

Thank you

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

cmathers — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 14:41:39 GMT

@AmirBar-Maor I frequently work with historic data while doing title investigation. The results might be used for an overlay and do not need to be incorporated into a larger cadastral dataset. I have punched in adjacent parcel descriptions to a subject parcel just to add context and compare boundary alignment between descriptions with no need to permanently maintain those additional boundaries. I recently worked through multiple versions of the same description and did not need all of them so I drew them into a temporary working file as the concept was refined. Having to push those into a Fabric dataset as I worked would have been unnecessary. I worked in local government and see the benefits of the Parcel Fabric to that industry but other industries use cadastral data without needing to maintain that sort of large combined cadastral dataset. I am going to be at the UC and might find some time to sit down with someone to discuss it.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

BuffaloCoWI — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 13:10:32 GMT

@AmirBar-Maor

We do use the Parcel Fabric, but I would much prefer that COGO Reader did not have that as a prerequisite. I often plot legal descriptions from deeds on a temporary layer.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

LTWDGIS — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 21:12:26 GMT

I agree with other people's comments. I work for a water district that has no need for creating a parcel fabric because that's not our line of work. Having said that, we do process legal descriptions on a regular basis, and it would be great if we could use COGO Reader's capabilities to read / OCR a document and have it create geometry for us. As a professional land surveyor, I can assure Esri that having a tool like this would present ArcGIS in a new light within the survey industry. Esri, please give this idea consideration for an upcoming version, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

LTWDGIS — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 21:16:32 GMT

Same in my work. Don't have a need for a parcel fabric, but it would be very helpful to have this tool work with the Traverse tool to read legal descriptions and create geometry from it.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

Brian_McLeer — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:18:07 GMT

This could be useful or creating polygon and line easement records.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 06:59:53 GMT

This webinar will be dedicated to COGO Reader.

We will also show how easy it is to migrate your existing data to the parcel fabric (it only takes a few minutes)

You are welcome to join

https://www.meetup.com/esri-parcel-fabric-meet-up/events/308788324/?eventOrigin=group_events_list

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

BillFox — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 16:05:31 GMT

esri's cogo has always been a separate tool so why is this reader enhancement being deployed differently?

for the "required" parcel fabric, here we go again?

Migrating Data From ArcStorm or Map Librarian (Coverages) to the Geodatabase

and,

Arc/Info

New technology provides a single point of entry for all ESRI software to access ARC/INFO data in various settings.
Traditional coverages
ARC/INFO LIBRARIAN tiles
ArcStorm databases
Server support for ArcStorm on Windows NT
Multifeature checkout
ARC/INFO client to Spatial Database Engine (SDE )

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000284.shtml

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:37:52 GMT

@BillFox

We implemented and released the COGO tools in ArcGIS Pro (like Traverse and COGO enabled feature classes) before releasing the parcel fabric. That was done in part because we know that COGO tools are used outside of land records to create geometries from measurements.

For parcels (Land Records /Cadastre) this is the evolution of esri technology:

The parcel fabric offers many advantages, some of which are:

Parcel lineage and historic parcels
All records are associated with their legal source (record) - they are defendable.
Tools that make data entry more efficient (like COGO Reader, but not only)
Tools that help you identify quality issues in your data
Tools that let you fix common quality issues in your data
Ability to evaluate and improve spatial accuracy over time
Ability to use web services: view and edit parcels from any type of client, not only desktop.
4D - ability to view the data as it was in historic moments in time.
...

Coverages and ArcStorm are examples of great technology for that time. We also get nostalgic for a good BUILD and CLEAN 🙂

We do not prevent organizations from managing their land records outside the parcel fabric, but we consider those types of solutions as custom solutions. Most customers, however, prefer COTS and configuration over a custom solution.

If you are attending the UC we will love to talk with you in person.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

BillFox — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 20:26:46 GMT

not this year, but that made me remember this from a few years ago:

..."Machine learning might offer additional opportunities... "Alexa: enter my traverse" Am..."

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 06:18:28 GMT

@BillFox

We actually thought about that. You have providers like Google, Amazon and others that will turn voice to text, but they all require sending your data to the cloud and a paid subscription.
We also experimented with AI, including the leading players, and found out:

They all require you to send the deed to the cloud, which might create issues around IP for the deed and its use.
It's a black box without a 'men in the loop'
It never says "I don't know what to do" - instead it 'hallucinates' and provides a completely wrong answer
It requires a paid subscription - would you pay for something that gives you wrong results and takes more time to review than entering the deed manually?

That said, I agree - AI/ML will offer some opportunities, and we have implemented some parcel fabric capabilities with the ArcGIS Pro AI Assistant (not released yet).

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 06:41:01 GMT

If you wonder how difficult it is to migrate to the parcel fabric, this short video will give you an idea:

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

SimonSchütte_ct — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 09:05:54 GMT

@BillFox @AmirBar-Maor "You have providers like Google, Amazon and others that will turn voice to text, but they all require sending your data to the cloud and a paid subscription."
No need for that, tools like Whisper can be run on nearly any modern machine locally and produce great results. Check out GitHub - Purfview/whisper-standalone-win, GitHub - kaixxx/noScribe, GitHub - CheshireCC/faster-whisper-GUI for example.

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

AmirBar-Maor — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 11:12:49 GMT

@SimonSchütte_ct

Thanks for sharing.

Do you use Whisper to enter metes and bounds descriptions?

I ask because:

Whisper takes as input voice recordings (wav files) - would users want to record themselves reading a deed and then process it?
How would they specify DMS (Degrees - minutes - seconds) for directions?
Would users be OK with dedicating 1 GB -10GB of RAM for this process?
Whisper also requires the installation of other packages to work.

Since COGO Reader can process a deed faster than reading it outload, I don't think that's a direction we'll be exploring anytime soon

Re: Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

SimonSchütte_ct — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 11:30:00 GMT

@AmirBar-Maor I use it to collect data in the field. From the auto-transcription, data can be pulled easily. Different use case, but just wanted to point out that not everything has to be linked to the cloud.
Maybe I´ll write a post on the topic over in a dedicated thread.