Parcel Editor - Editing Buttons and Tools

Index:

Select Feature tool

This is the tool you should use most frequently, as it is the main way you manipulate the selected set of features (the selected set of features appear yellow (or whatever the selection color is) while you are using the Parcel Editor dialog to edit a line shapefile. They are the lines that most of the other buttons and tools operate on--for instance, if you want to move several lines, you would select them using this tool and click the Mover tool, which will move only the lines that are part of the selected set). Make sure this tool appears 'pressed-in' and click on a line on the display. It should turn yellow (or whatever the selection color is), and all the other lines will not be yellow. To select more lines, hold down the Shift key and continue clicking on other lines. You can also select several lines by dragging a box over the lines you want to select. To unselect some of the lines that are selected, hold down the Shift key and click on them. The number of selected lines will be displayed at the bottom of the dialog. When this tool is 'pressed-in', you are in regular or Select mode, in which the lines appear yellow, as opposed to Vertex Edit mode, in which the selected lines will have hollow black boxes around each vertex. You may notice that graphics including text labels and graphic shapes on the View will not be visible while you are in Select mode (they may draw but immediately disappear); this is due to the node marking environment. If you wish to see your graphics, click on the Vertex Edit tool to enter vertex edit mode, in which graphics will be visible (but node markers will not).

This tool also can perform several additional functions. If you hold down the Shift key and click on this tool, all the lines that have a dangle as one or both of their endpoints will be selected. This is useful if you want to see all the lines that need fixing or if you want to delete ('Cut') all the problematic lines. If you hold down the Ctrl key and click on the tool, the two selected lines will be 'unsplit' (made into one line) [you have to have two and only two lines selected and they must join at an endpoint (a pseudonode--marked with a blue dot) but not at both endpoints (i.e. they can't form a loop)]. If you wish to unsplit more than two lines, you can select them all and use the View GUI’s Edit-->Union Features menu command. This will not check if the lines are actually joined first, however, so after doing this, to avoid ending up with multipart shapes, you should use the ‘Split multipart features into single parts’ function from the Main Menu’s ‘Additional Options’ button. If you hold down the Ctrl key and apply the tool (use it on the View's display) you can split lines with it [it works just like the Splitter tool--if you hold down Ctrl and click at a point, it will split the selected line at the nearest vertex; if you hold down Ctrl and drag a line across the selected line(s) it will split the selected line(s) at the point(s) where your dragged line crosses. To split a line at a vertex by Ctrl-clicking, you must have only one line selected, but to split them by dragging, you can drag the line across multiple selected lines if you wish]. These additional splitting functions, while also available through the Splitter tool, are provided here as a timesaving shortcut. See the help for the Splitter tool for more information on splitting.

Clear Selected Features button

Clicking here will unselect all the features (lines) in your edit theme. If you hold down the Shift key and click this button, you will select all the features, and if you hold down the Ctrl key and click, you will invert or ‘swap’ the selection (all the selected features will become unselected and all the unselected features will become selected).

Draw Line tool

Use this tool to manually add lines to your edit theme by drawing them with the mouse. Click on the tool and then draw a line by repeatedly clicking on the display where you want the vertices (corners) of the line to be. Double click to draw the last vertex or endpoint (or, in ArcView 3.1 or later, hold down the Ctrl key and click to end the line). This is the way to enter lines that you can't enter from a survey using the Draw Survey tool or ‘grab’ from another theme. You can draw the lines freehand or using a background feature or image theme as a guide. If you use this tool with snapping on, each vertex (not just the endpoints) will snap to any other feature within the snapping radius. This can save you time by preventing the need for snapping endpoints later; just be careful to set the snapping radius to a small enough value that you won't have any undesired vertex snaps (i.e. any vertex other than the endpoints).

This tool also allows you to draw 'split' lines, lines which split any other line they cross. This is useful because if lines cross each other without endpoints at the intersection, they will not build correctly into polygons. To draw a splitting line (this is the same as the Draw Line To Split Feature tool on the ArcView View toolbar (it is in the tool menu under the Draw Point or Draw Line tool)), just hold down the Shift key as you draw a line using the tool. Instead of getting a regular line, you will get a 'split' line. Occasionally this tool will not split lines correctly when you hold down the Shift key. This is due to a bug in an ArcView command. Check to make sure that there are no places along your split line where there is a light blue pseudonode where your line crossed another. Use snapping and the Vertex Edit tool to fix any errors.

Vertex Edit tool

Clicking on this tool puts you in Vertex Edit mode, in which the selected line will have a hollow black box around each of its vertices (as opposed to regular or Select mode in which the selected lines appear yellow; to return to regular mode, click on the 'Select Feature' tool so it appears 'pressed-in'). In Vertex Edit mode, you can select a line that is not selected by clicking on it, then place the mouse cursor over one of the hollow vertex boxes and drag it to a new position by holding down the left mouse button and dragging. You can delete a vertex (in the Windows environment, at least) by holding the mouse cursor over a hollow vertex box and hitting the Delete key on the keyboard. You can also add a new vertex along a line segment by holding the mouse cursor over a line segment (along a straight part of a line, not over a vertex) and clicking. If snapping is on, any time you move a vertex, all the vertices will try to snap to any other line feature within the snapping radius, so be careful to keep the snapping radius as small as possible by zooming in close before setting the snapping radius. This tool is automatically selected every time you set the snapping radius because it is the main tool to use to snap lines together. For more on snapping, see 'Snapping checkbox', Markers, and Topology.

Splitter tool

Use the splitter tool to split lines into two pieces. This is necessary if you want to join a second line's endpoint to the middle of a line, since lines can only topologically join each other at their endpoints. It is also a step in deleting part of a line; split it then select the undesired half and click 'Cut' (or, in Windows, hit the Delete key with the View as the active window). This also might be necessary if you want two lines with different attributes (for instance if a road changes from paved to dirt, or changes name at a town line).

You can split a line in one of two ways: at a vertex or along a segment. If you split at a vertex, you need to click a point on the display near the desired split vertex and you will be shown a red 'X' at the vertex and asked if that is the correct place to split. If you split along a segment, you will have to drag a line segment that intersects the selected line (the one you want to split) at the desired split point. To do this, click once on the display near the line you want to split, and, holding the mouse button down, move the mouse so that the line segment thus formed crosses the line to split it at the desired split point. The line segment you drag will not become a feature--it just indicates the point where you want to split. Remember, if the results are not what you wanted, you can click 'Undo' and try again. After splitting, you will be left with two lines whose endpoints connect at a 'pseudonode' (marked with a light blue dot--see Markers) in the place of your original line. To split, you must have one and only one line selected. The 'Splitter' tool will appear 'grayed-out' if this is not the case. The Splitter tool will automatically turn snapping off to prevent unintended snapping--see 'Snapping checkbox' for more on snapping. You can also access split functions using the Select Feature tool.

The Splitter tool also has a function that allows you to extend the selected line to intersect and split another line. To access this function, hold down the Shift key and click the Splitter tool. Then drag a circle on the display whose radius is the maximum distance that you wish to attempt to extend the line. Only the dangling end or ends of the line will be extended, and only if they meet a line within the search radius. The line will be extended (in the direction defined by the dangling end point and the next vertex in the line) to the first line it hits, and it will split that line at the point where it intersects it, leaving you with "topologically correct" line intersections. As with Splitter, you must have one and only one line selected to use this function.

Rotator tool

Use this tool to rotate lines around a pivot point. This is most often necessary with lines that were entered from a survey, as the difference between magnetic and true north can make survey lines appear skewed [see 'Draw Survey tool' for more information on surveys and rotation]. To rotate, select the lines you want to rotate using the Select Feature tool and click the Rotator tool (you must have at least one line selected to use this tool--it will appear 'grayed-out' if no lines are selected). Enter in the number of degrees to rotate (positive numbers rotate the lines counter-clockwise, negative numbers rotate clockwise; the typical range of degrees is 0 to 16 but often ranges from -22 to 22 for property surveys). Then click on the display where you want the pivot point to be (the center point around which the lines will rotate--where this point is is not critical to your final results--you will have to move the lines around using the 'Mover' tool afterwards regardless). Often you will have to choose the rotation degree by trial and error--just keep clicking 'Undo' and re-rotating until you get the desired result. The Rotator tool automatically turns snapping off to prevent unintended snapping--see 'Snapping checkbox' for more info.

Mover tool

This tool enables you to move the selected lines around. The Parcel Editor dialog doesn't have a tool that enables you to 'drag' lines around with the mouse (this is because the ArcView 'dragging' tool isn't well suited for precision editing--it shows a box around the lines instead of the lines themselves while you are dragging and it also enables you to 'stretch' lines in various directions, which isn't desirable for or relevant to this type of parcel editing (if you want to use this tool you can use the default ArcView tool on the regular View toolbar while you are still in the Parcel Editor); the Mover tool operates similarly to the equivalent ArcEdit function). Instead, you click twice on the display, once for the 'from' point and once for the 'to' point. All the selected lines will move the vector distance and direction represented by these two points' relation to one another.

There are two options for moving: with and without snapping to an endpoint. Both turn regular snapping off to prevent unintended snapping. If you choose to snap to an endpoint, the first click will be to select an endpoint from the selected set of lines, and the second click will be to select an endpoint from the unselected set of lines. The selected lines will move so that these two endpoints will snap together while the selected lines maintain their position respective to one another. No other endpoints will snap. This is useful if you want to snap pieces of a survey together without changing the precise shape of the survey's lines, or anytime you want to snap lines together where the shape of the lines is more important to preserve than their position. You must have at least one line selected to use the Mover tool--it will appear 'grayed-out' if no lines are selected.

You can also move the selected lines by an exact distance if you like, by typing in X and Y distances to move. Hold down Shift and Ctrl while you click the Mover button in order to move by an exact typed distance.

Delete Every Other Vertex button

This function will delete every other vertex (i.e., the second, fourth, sixth, eighth vertex, etc.) in the selected line(s). It will not delete the first or last vertex in the line, so the lines will remain snapped to the "nodes" at their endpoints. However, it is possible to adversely affect the topology of the lines by using this button--two lines that previously did not overlap can sometimes end up overlapping after using this function. It is a good idea to examine your linework carefully after using this button.

This is useful when you have a line that has overly-dense vertices. This is common with GPS linework and with linework that was digitized in stream mode or at too large a scale.

Grab line from background theme tool

This tool enables you to 'grab' or 'import' lines from a background theme (a feature theme other than the one you are editing) into the edit coverage. This is a way to make your parcels exactly abut other features (like a road or water body). You can grab from a line theme or a polygon theme (in which case the polygon's perimeter will be imported as a line). This tool has been updated; it will now grab every part of a multipart line or polygon (including donut polygons) and make each part into a new feature. Previously it would only grab the first part of a multipart feature or donut polygon.

Make the background theme active and click this tool, then, on the View, click the feature you want to grab. It will be brought into the edit theme as a new line. If you hold down the Shift key while you click the feature, you can continue to grab features; otherwise the Select Feature tool will be automatically selected after grabbing. If you click near several features, they will all be grabbed at once. Be careful not to grab the same feature twice; if you do you will later have to select and delete one of them using the Select Previous/Next Feature buttons.

Mark Intersections button

This button enables you to determine if your shapefile has any illegal intersections or doubled lines. Since this function can be very slow for large sets of lines, it only works on the selected lines.

Select the lines you want to test for intersections (or all the lines if your shapefile isn't too big (less than, say, a few hundred lines)) and click this button. You will be informed of how many intersections you have, and they will be marked with graphic points of various colors: magenta markers will be drawn where two lines intersect, large black markers will be drawn on the middle of lines that intersect themselves (not on the actual self-intersection--you will have to find these yourself), and gray markers will be drawn where there are two identical lines that lie on top of each other (you must delete one of these--see Select Previous/Next Feature buttons for further instructions on how to do this). These markers will only be visible in Vertex Edit mode because of the way the Parcel Editor draws the selected lines and node markers.

The markers are persistant graphic shapes (unlike the regular dangle and pseudonode markers) and will remain on the view until you delete them. You can delete all the intersection markers by Shift-clicking on this button.

If you wish to split two (and only two) lines that have been found to have an intersection, you can select them both and Ctrl-click on this button, and they will be split into non-intersecting lines joined correctly at common nodes.

Select Previous/Next Feature buttons

These buttons allow you to select the next or previous feature (line) using the order in which they appear in the theme's table. This can be extremely useful if you are having trouble selecting only the feature you want, especially if you have two lines directly on top of each other, in which case you will be unable to select only one of them to move or delete it. If you have more than one line selected, clicking on the Select Previous Feature button will select the first selected line and clicking Select Next Feature will select the last selected line (often the one that was added or split more recently), enabling you to delete or move one to fix the problem (having two lines on top of one another is a topological no-no and will prevent you from building correctly).

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