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Usually you will want to have a background theme in order to properly place your parcel boundaries; good choices are USGS Topographic Quads and Orthophotos. You can browse for these using the standard ArcView Add Theme button. It is recommended that you not use library themes or themes that are accessed over a network because the Parcel Editor redraws very frequently in order to keep the node markers up to date. Instead, try to use themes from your hard drive or from a CD-ROM.
There are three main ways to enter new lines into your edit theme. The first is to use the Draw Line tool to manually draw in a new line using the mouse. This tool works just like the standard ArcView tool it resembles: you click on the tool to select it, then click on the display where you want the vertices of the line to fall. To end the line, double click where you want the endpoint to fall, or, in ArcView 3.1 and later, Ctrl-click. Another way to add a new line is to grab it from a background theme (a theme in the View other than the one you are editing) or put it from another theme. The third way to enter new lines is to use the Draw Survey tool. To draw a survey, you must have already entered a property survey in as a text file using the Survey Entry Dialog. Click on the Draw Survey tool and browse to the text survey file you entered. Then click on the display at the point where you want the survey to begin drawing.
Next, you will want to move your newly drawn survey line into the correct position relative to other lines in your edit theme or a background theme. To move lines, use the Mover tool. Generally you will say 'no' to snapping to an endpoint, then click on the display twice. The selected lines will move the distance and direction indicated by the two points you clicked. Surveys often require rotation, especially ones that were done using magnetic North. Most commonly, a survey will need to be rotated 10-16 degrees (counterclockwise, which uses a positive number of degrees in this program) but rotation can vary from more than -22 to +22 degrees in some surveys. Magnetic North varies from year to year and survey technology also has changed over time. Recent surveys (1990s) sometimes are to true North, but still may require a degree or two of rotation. Use the Rotator tool to rotate selected lines. It is best to rotate all lines from a single survey together by selecting them all before rotating.
When you need to connect two lines at their endpoints, you have three options: you can use the 'snap to endpoint' option of the Mover tool to move an entire line or set of lines so that one of the end points joins with the endpoint of an unselected line, you can use the snapping property, or you can use the Quicksnap tool. Use the Snapping checkbox to turn snapping on and off and to set the snapping radius. When you set the snapping on, the Vertex Edit tool will become selected automatically and you will be placed in vertex editing mode, which gives the lines a different appearance--hollow boxes will appear at the selected line's vertices. In this mode, you can move, add and delete vertices. Use this mode to move the line's endpoint close enough to another line's endpoint to snap them together. You cannot easily snap a line's endpoint to its own other endpoint in ArcView (e.g. make the line into a loop--you have to split the line into two to do this). The theme may not build correctly if you have single line loops. They are marked with green node markers on the display.
It is highly recommended that you zoom in as far as possible before turning the snapping on so as to make the snapping radius as small as possible. This is because one feature of ArcView's snapping environment is that when you snap a vertex, all the other vertices of that line will also try to snap to whatever they can. This can have very undesirable consequences, so be sure to look at your lines after performing snapping, and turn snapping off when you are not using it. Several tools on this dialog automatically turn snapping off in order to avoid these undesirable effects. Frequently you will want to join lines at points other than their endpoints (you might need to join a line to a second line's vertex or a point along a line segment). In order to do this, you need to create a new endpoint at a point along that line by splitting it in half. The Splitter tool will split a line either at a vertex or at a point along a segment, enabling you to join another line at that point (or to delete part of a line). You can also use the Extend function to more quickly achieve a similar effect; it is available by Shift-clicking the Splitter tool. To delete a selected line or lines, use the Cut button. The Paste button will replace the last line(s) cut. The Undo and Redo buttons allow you to undo your mistakes (and redo them if need be).
Once you have the lines that bound your parcels all in position and correctly joined so that there are no dangles, you are ready to build them into polygons. Click the Builder button. One thing to watch out for with the Build function is that it can be very slow (if your line theme is large or your computer is slow). Another is that it doesn't detect intersecting lines (this means that if your lines cross over each other you will end up with some really strange polygons, which will not be topologically correct; use the Mark Intersections button to detect intersections before building). Editing your parcel map or other data using these methods can be a highly precise form of data entry.
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