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Allow Resizing of "Points to merge" list in Merge Parcel Points

1788
6
10-20-2021 12:00 PM
Status: Implemented
jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Merge Parcel Points remains one of my favorite tools. Even after fairly extensive cleaning, our cadastral data was extremely messy when it was imported into a Pro Parcel Fabric. If I could do it over again, I'd have spent a few more weeks trying to clean things first, but we're too far down the road now.

Cleaning up some of our over-noded / densified boundaries has been made unspeakably easier with the addition of the Merge Parcel Points tool.

I do have slight tweak I'd like to see, however, and that's the size of the "points to merge" list. It's currently about 4.5 items tall. The "merged point attributes" list, however, is extremely tall!

jcarlson_1-1634756079542.png

With very few exceptions, I don't find myself changing many of the attributes upon merging points. If I do, it's simple enough from the Attributes pane itself.

Often, however, I am selecting a large number of points. In messy areas (hydro boundaries, densified curves, etc) I may have a selection into the double digits.

Having the option to make that list longer, or even hiding/collapsing the attributes altogether, would make my life a lot easier!

6 Comments
AmirBar-Maor
Status changed to: Under Consideration

Thanks Josh

 

AmirBar-Maor

@jcarlson  a few questions:

1. Why do you have so many points to merge? can you show us a screenshot of such an example?

2. Would it help if each point had a temporary number (1,2,3,...) that was also displayed as a graphic on the map to make it easier to select the correct point faster?

3. Would it help to also show the point's name in the grid (next to the OID) - if the point does have a name?

 

jcarlson

@AmirBar-Maor 

1.

We have a lot of points mostly because we went straight from a topology-enabled feature dataset to the Pro fabric, and said dataset was handed off to us from the prior staff without our fully understanding all of its ins and outs. We found out later that said staff weren't even using the topology tools, so many of our points ended up being multiple points that were slightly offset.

We created our parcel features from various polygon layers, and we didn't realize that many of these had densified segments. I don't just mean curves (those were mostly fixed prior to import), but even straight road frontages that, per their respective deeds/plats, ought to be a single two-point line, might have a large number of vertices along the line.

There are also cases where a parcel appears to follow a creek centerline, and from what I can tell, prior staff must have traced a hydro lines layer to create the boundary, leaving behind dozens, in some cases hundreds, of vertices along a section of boundary that might have only required a handful of curves and vertices.

All this meant that the vertices along these parcels got converted to fabric points, with two-point lines between them. Here's a screenshot I had handy (though this is not even close to the worst we've seen).

Legally speaking, this boundary should be a single line with a distance, no bearing.Legally speaking, this boundary should be a single line with a distance, no bearing.

 

Add to all that the fact that we did this all when the Pro Parcel Fabric was v1, and certain tools (notably Simplify by Straight Lines and Circular Arcs) were unavailable at the time. Like I said, I'd do things differently if I had to import into the parcel fabric all over again, but we're already a ways down the road of actually using the fabric, so we're just cleaning things up as we go.

Fixing areas like this isn't too bad, but some alignment tools won't work, as some of the tiny lines would be collapsed into zero-length features, or the points would be snapped to being overlapping. Merge Points is amazing for this kind of work, allowing me to simplify the boundary to a single edge, from which point I can use ReshapeEdit Vertices, etc., to create the correct boundary shape.

 

2.

I think it would, actually. When I get to particularly messy areas, I have a separate map in which the points are labelled with their OID with leader lines to help with this process, which is sort of the same idea. A temporary (and smaller) number would be even better, and could work without switching maps.

That said, even if I knew which point I wanted to select, the small list area might still negatively impact the workflow.

 

3.

As of yet, we don't have very many named points. I could see that being useful if a named point was involved in the merge, however.

 

I also wanted to mention, sometimes the point I want is the item that's "half-visible" in the list. When I click on that, the list suddenly scrolls down, and the mouse click is registered after the scroll, and I find I've selected the point below what I thought I clicked on.

Once our cadastre gets really cleaned up (maybe in 10 years!), I doubt this issue will matter quite as much, but I still think it would be handy to be able to resize that list regardless.

AmirBar-Maor

@jcarlson 

Thanks for the answers and insights. 

"Merge Points is amazing for this kind of work, ..." thanks so much.

You should notice performance improvement with ArcGIS Pro 2.9 and we'll try to make it even better in a future release. 

AmirBar-Maor
Status changed to: In Product Plan

@jcarlson 

Here is a sneak peek into the enhancement planned for Pro 3.0:

1. Point labels makes it easier to know which point is which

2. A new splitter lets you resize the point selection area versus the area showing the attributes of preserved point.

Merge Points Splitter and Labeling 3_0.gif

AmirBar-Maor
Status changed to: Implemented

With Pro 3.0 you can resize the selected point area.

The displayed points use incremental values from '1' instead of ObjectIDs. Those values are also displayed in the map which makes it easier to decide which point to preserve.