Hi Jason
As Nick said, its pretty simple - you create an empty fabric, add in some control points, traverse in a parcel or a subdivision and then join it to the control point or points.
Here are the steps in some more detail:
1. First you need to create your empty parcel fabric in a feature dataset. You will define a spatial reference for the feature dataset and that is what your fabric will use.
2. Load the empty fabric into the map and begin adding control points. In the attached screenshot, EmptyFabricAndPLSSLines, I have loaded some PLSS lines (feature class) as a reference and an empty fabric.
3. Next, I will enter in the coordinates of a control point. You will need control point coordinates to enter. If you dont have these, you could estimate them from PLSS corners for now and update them later. To manually enter a control point click Maintain Control Points on the Parcel Editor toolbar. See the attached AddControlPt screenshot. Control points can also be migrated in.
4. Once I added my first control point, I traversed in a single parcel. To create a new parcel, I clicked the New Parcel in New Plan button on the Parcel Editor toolbar. You can use the default <map> plan or go and create a new plan in the plan directory. Just traverse in your parcel, it doesnt matter where you start on the map, you will position/join the parcel once its complete. See the attached TraverseInParcel screenshot.
5. Once the parcel is complete, I clicked Keep Changes to Parcel Data and Join on the parcel details dialog box, and used the Join dialog to join the connection line of the parcel to the control point. See the attached JoinToControl screenshot.
6. Once you have added your first parcel, just keep on traversing in parcels and joining.
Now it would be better to have more that one control point to join to for correct scale and rotation purposes. So the options are to:
-Enter a larger block of parcels and then join the block to two or more control points
-Bring in more control points at a later stage and run Least-squares adjustment which would take care of the scate and rotation, and have the added benefit of identifying any errors. Parcel corners can be linked to control points at any stage.
Lastly, if you dont have any control points, you could simply traverse in parcels, and when you join them, simply click OK to drop/place the parcel in the map. In this case, no join links are established. You could use a background layer that can act as a reference as to where you can drop your first parcel. Later on, you can then bring in control points and run a least squares adjustment to adjust the parcels to the more accurate control network.
I hope this helps
Christine
Parcel Editing team