point-line-parcel topology and regenerating parcel geometry

[BrandonPlewe]

I'm relearning the ArcGIS Pro parcel fabric after using the previous parcel fabric model several years ago. For context, I am building the parcels for a historical town, when surveys and deeds were  less precise/accurate than today. So there is a fair amount of fudging and adjusting going on.

I seem to remember that in the old model, there was an explicit, enforced linkage between points, lines, and parcels. There were advantages to this in terms of enforcing the correspondence between the given measurements and the feature geometry; for example, I seem to remember a tool that could regenerate the geometry from the measurements (constrained by control points) if I manually messed up some vertices.

If I understand correctly, these explicit topological relationships are not in the new data model; instead, it uses a geodatabase topology dataset to enforce that the points, lines, and parcels visually line up. It appears that the goal is to allow for more freedom to "align" (fudge) the geometry to look better than the legal descriptions dictate. Is that correct?

Question 1: if in the process of making adjustments I completely mess up some geometry, is it possible to regenerate a few points/lines/parcels from the line measurements? Versioning/undo isn't always an option, some of the issues I am finding are from before I upgraded the parcel fabric.

Question 2: If I see a point that has been moved off of the line/parcel vertices, or a line that has been moved off the parcel boundary, do I need to somehow reconnect things in the database (like I did in the olden days), or do I just visually move it so it lines up again?

[BrandonPlewe · Accepted solution]

I figured it out, this is handled by the new Least Squares feature, once I finally figured out how to get it working. I had some measurement errors that were causing it to fail, but I realized that running it on a selection would only analyze/adjust the selected features, so I could narrow down the problems. Feature request: it would be nice if when it won't resolve, it would give some idea of which measurements are the problem, rather than just throwing a useless "General Function Failure."

In general, I have grown to really like the new approach for my historical data, because I can enter the measurements as in the original document, even if they are not quite coherent, then figure out a closest match. In the old parcel fabric, I had to alter the measurements to make the parcels close, which violated source integrity.

That said, a county government friend of mine said this was a deal-breaker for them switching their 290,000 parcels over to the new parcel fabric because the recorder's office needs to show the parcels true to the legal descriptions "warts and all," not the current fabric's model of adjustments to "make it look pretty."