InventoryManager: Validate Plots

Owned by Jacob Midtlyng
Last updated: Nov 10, 2021 by Kerry Halligan
2 min read

Overview

The Validate Plots tool is intended to help ensure the data integrity between Stands and Plots. In order to perform Export of inventory data, as well as check cruise scoring, each plot must know which stand it belongs to. The relationship between Plots and Stands is maintained using the Unique_ID and Parent_ID attribute fields. Each Stand and Plot feature has a unique value, stored as a UUID in the Unique_ID field. Plots store their Stand’s Unique_ID value in their Parent_ID field.

This relationship can be broken when a Stand boundary is modified such that it no longer includes one or more stands. Consider the scenario where two Stand polygons are merged into a single multi-part Stand feature using the Merge tool. In this scenario, half of the plots would have a Parent_ID value that does not match the Unique_ID of the new, merged Stand feature.

To address this problem, the Validate Plots tool performs a spatial search for all plots that fall within the spatial extent of the selected Stand. For each Plot, the tool assesses the following:

  1. Does the Plot have a Unique_ID value? If it does not, a Unique_ID value is created for that plot. This situation can occur when Plot features are loaded using ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Online/Portal rather than being created with the Plot Layout tool.

  2. Does the Parent_ID of the Plot match the Unique_ID of the stand that contains it? If not, the Parent_ID of the Plot is updated to match the Unique_ID of the Stand.

  3. Does the Stand_ID of the Plot match the Stand_ID of the stand that contains it? If not, the Stand_ID of the Plot is updated to match the Stand_ID of the Stand. Stand_ID is not required by the system for the logical relationship between a Plot and its Stand, but it is very helpful for users when each Plot displays the correct Stand_ID.

Tool Operation

After editing (e.g., adjusting the boundary vertices, merging, splitting) and/or deleting Stands the Validate tool can reconnect Plots which might otherwise become orphaned records.

 

  1. Select the Stands to validate using map clicks (including use of Shift+click to select multiple Stands) or the Search tool

  2. Select the Validate tab from the submenu

  3. Click ‘Validate Plots’ to being processing

  4. Review the validation results. These results will indicate how many stands were processed, how many plots were processed, and what updates were made.