Expand COGO Reader beyond Parcel Fabric

[cmathers]

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.

[cmathers]

@DanielStone  I understand wanting to try to have people migrate to the parcel fabric where applicable or where there is desire by the user. We are not however being given any real reasons why the tool could not be used outside the fabric by those people who do not wish to use the fabric for whatever reason. 

[AKRRMapGuy]

Like many others have said, we don't manage parcels that would lend to the concept of parcel fabric. We have a lot of legal descriptions that are not parcels or whole chunks of land. Locking this tool behind an irrelevant Parcel Fabric paywall is unbelievably short sided and sloppy on ESRI's part. Forcing entities to buy a whole platform they do not need to use this drafting tool is silly. 

[DanielStone]

Good day AKRRMapGuy,

Help me understand your use case. What are the legal descriptions describing if they are not parcels or whole chucks of land? Are they open traverses? Would you be able to provide examples?

Could you also help me understand your comment on Parcel Fabric paywall. There is no extra charge for using the parcel fabric. If you have a license of ArcGIS Pro, standard or advance, you can create a parcel fabric. There is not an extra license or extension.

[AKRRMapGuy]

@DanielStone 

An example of this would be a Permit or Lease area inside of a parcel. Our Permits and Leases can and do overlap with each other and sometimes could even be covering multiple parcels. Easements spanning multiple parcels are also what we work on. We don't really care too much about the 'parcel' portion of parcel fabric as we don't manage parcels, we manage things on land we own. 

These layers exist in an EGDB and are edited via direct connection to the database using traditional versioning. My understanding is, for us to publish those layers to ArcGIS Enterprise we would need an Enterprise license for parcel fabric, is that not correct? I believe we would also need an extension (that we also have very little use for) for every user to be able to edit the 'parcel fabric' enabled layers via branch versioning. Perhaps the paywall isn't on the Pro side, but it certainly is on the Enterprise side. My users that do these workflows really do only care about the 'drafting' portion of Pro. This would be useful for them to do their drafting workflows to get things into our EGDB or CAD. 

[DanielStone]

Good day Again AKRRMapGuy,

Thank you for sharing your use case. The parcel fabric is perfect for managing Permit and Lease data. Remember, we use the term "Parcel" in the generic definition as in "a specific, distinct piece of land with clearly defined boundaries that is legally recognized and can be owned, bought, sold, leased, or used as an easement. Also referred to as the Rights, Restrictions, and Responsibilities (3Rs). Polygons or "Parcels" in the fabric CAN overlap. Are you modeling surface, subsurface, or aerial rights? You can use beginning/ending elevation and floororder attribute to model "Strata parcels".

As far as publishing to ArcGIS Enterprise, you just publish as a weblayer. The data needs to be branched versioned (No more compress - yay!) but there is no such thing as an Enterprise license for parcel fabric. Parcel Fabric is part of core ArcGIS, no extensions or anything separate to purchase.

If your users are more proficient in CAD, read this blog on using ArcGIS for AutoCAD to edit a parcel fabric. https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/autocad/data-management/connect-gis-and-cad-teams-on-parce...

Let me know if you have additional questions or concerns.

Dan

[AKRRMapGuy]

For the editing question, I think what was making me think more licensing was required was addressed in 12.0(and 11.5 patch) for us. The ability to make basic edits without the license that Trace and UN was rolled in to changes things, along with Professional(desktop Standard) and Prof Plus(desktop Advanced) being able to edit parcel fabrics. We haven't converted our Pro/Desktop licenses to the new types yet. Do you know if the Standard/Advanced license equivalents honor the same rules outlined here?  arcgis-enterprise-functionality-matrix-current.pdf Our users with 'advanced' licenses are still considered 'creators'.

[EllenEndebrockCOM]

To add to this, I'm often asked to verify legal descriptions. I'm not permanently mapping them, just using the Line Notes to draw them and make sure they match our geometry. I suppose I could create a dummy parcel fabric just to use this tool, but that seems needlessly complicated. I only get really complicated legals a handful of times a year.

[AKRRMapGuy]

@EllenEndebrockCOM 

We do some of that as well. I forgot about that. We do a lot of 'proposed' things that aren't always permanent. 

[DanielStone]

Good day EllenEndebrockCOM,

You say "I'm often asked to verify legal descriptions. I'm not permanently mapping them, just using the Line Notes to draw them and make sure they match our geometry."

What is "our geometry" Leases? Pipeline ROWs? Easements? Maybe they should be stored in a parcel fabric so that you can track the history and lineage of those features. Then you could have a "Preliminary" parcel type to capture the features you are not permanently storing. If the temporary descriptions were in the parcel fabric, you could use the Least Square Adjustment Consistency check. A consistency check evaluates the dimensions of the input lines, and dimensions that do not fit with the solution are identified as outliers or possible blunders. If might help evaluate the confidence of your descriptions.

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/parcel-editing/least-squares-parcel-fabric.htm#GU...

[DanielStone]

Good day Again AKRRMapGuy and EllenEndebrockCOM,

We have many customers that use a preliminary parcel type. That parcel type is used to hold "parcels" (remember I'm using the term parcels in the generic definition of a piece of land) that have not been finalized, recorded, or fully accepted.

Once they meet the criteria to become part of the full non-preliminary parcels, you can use the tool "Change parcel type" to change from preliminary to in-production. A common workflow among many of our clients.

Dan