Creating a Parcel Fabric from Polygons

Parcel Data is useful in GIS for finding ownership, tax numbers, statistics, pretty much anything with data analysis but when it comes to surveying and easements it is important to be able to see the bearings and distances of boundaries and lines.

Many counties won't even release parcel data (unless you pay for it) data will also be omitted. If you do get it from the county it will most likely be a shapefile. If you are trying to label polygons, you won't be able to label the perimeter without creating lines. A parcel fabric is a set of features and tables that includes all of the information related to a property: Parcel numbers, boundary lines, control points, bearings and distances, areas, etc.

Provided you have clean polygons the process is relatively simple to convert a set of polygons into a parcel fabric. In simple terms you'll convert your polygons to lines, create a topology making sure there are no overlaps etc. and then you'll load it into a parcel fabric.

Shapefile

Parcel Fabric

County Map

Setting the stage:

Create New Parcel Fabric:

First we'll create a new parcel fabric. Create a feature dataset in a file geodatabase. Right click on the feature dataset and create new parcel fabric.

• File Geodatabase >>
  • Feature Dataset >>
    • Parcel Fabric

Create Polygon Feature Class:

You'll want to have your polygon layer as a feature class in a feature dataset

• File Geodatabase >>
  • Feature Dataset >>
    • Parcel Fabric
    • Polygons

Convert Polygons to Lines

Convert the polygons to lines with wouldn't you know it Polygon to Line

• File Geodatabase >>
  • Feature Dataset >>
    • Parcel Fabric
    • Polygons
    • Lines

Create Topology

Then You'll create a topology in your Feature dataset which will include both the polygon and line feature classes with the following rules:

1. [Line feature class] Must Be Covered By Boundary Of [Polygon feature class].
2. [Line feature class] Must Not Self-Overlap.
3. [Line feature class] Must Not Self-Intersect.
4. [Line feature class] Must Be Single Part.
5. [Line feature class] Must Not Intersect Or Touch Interior.
6. [Polygon feature class] Boundary Must Be Covered By [Line feature class].

Validate and fix any errors.

• File Geodatabase >>
  • Feature Dataset >>
    • Parcel Fabric
    • Polygons
    • Lines
    • Topology

Attribute Matching

If you want any of your polygon's attributes to carry over then you'll need to do some field matching. The default parcel fabric fields are listed HERE. In my case I primarily care about the APN or parcel number, but I also want to add Owner information which isn't a default field in the parcel fabric, but no matter- just make sure that whatever field you want transferred over on the import that there is the same field in the parcel fabric.

So I changed my APN field on my polygon layer to NAME so my parcel fabric polygons will have parcel numbers. I then created an OWNER field in the parcel fabric polygon layer so that it would be populated when I imported my polygon layer.

Load Topology to a Parcel Fabric

Once you've validated your topology and created modified all your attribute fields as you like them, then you can load the topology to the parcel fabric with again wouldn't you know it Load Topology To a Parcel Fabric

If you did everything right then your parcel fabric will be beautiful, lines will have bearings and distances, polygons will have parcel numbers and owners.

Granted labeling the parcel fabric is enough for another post on its own but now labeling is a possibility.