Adjoiner Labels (VDCADJLABEL) | VDC Custom CAD Tools

Labels the subject parcel and every adjoiner: the plat "now-or-formerly" block, from the county's live public GIS parcel service, dropping a formatted MText at each parcel's centroid with PIN / TMS / owner / deed current as of the run.

Subject parcel (your pick) Shared-boundary adjoiner Across-road buffer catch Centroid label anchor

What it does

Topology: resolves the subject by point-in-polygon from your pick (works over xrefs), then finds every parcel sharing a boundary.
Buffer catch: parcels within the buffer distance count as adjoiners even without a shared line, across-the-road / across-the-ditch owners.
Live query: hits the county's public ArcGIS REST service at run time, so PIN / TMS / owner / deed are current, not last-looked-up.
Placement: one MText per parcel at its centroid, stamped with XData (PIN + profile) so Run/reFresh find and update it in place.
Name order: reorders SMITH JOHN A to JOHN A SMITH; entities (LLC/INC/TRUST), & couples, and ambiguous names stay as published.
Title case (default): the county's ALL-CAPS owner reads Broadway at the Beach Palace Tract LLC, legal acronyms stay upper. An ALL CAPS toggle forces the whole label upper.
Empty GIS lines drop (a county without deed book/page simply omits that line); PIN/TMS re-masked to plat format.
Zoning (opt-in): adds a Zoning: <code> line where the county publishes it, Horry from its separate zoning-district layer (point-in-polygon per parcel), Brunswick off the parcel. Greys out elsewhere; the line collapses when off or blank.

Modes & settings

Run (default): dialog, then query and place. Match-or-insert by PIN, scoped to the current label layer (+ profile), labels on other layers are invisible to the run, so per-sheet adjoiner sets on separate layers coexist (freeze per viewport; an edge parcel can carry one label per layer). On that layer, with "refresh existing labels" on, matched labels update and parcels dropped from the fresh result are removed; off = additive, add new adjoiners only, leave existing labels untouched so hand-edits survive.
reFresh (F): no dialog, re-queries each stamped label by PIN + profile, updates contents in place, no inserts, no deletes. The before-issuing re-verify.
Pick: keep labeling parcels one after another, pick a point inside each, or type PIN at the prompt to enter one; Enter/Esc to finish. The lot-by-lot way to fill out a block. Clear: erases every VDC adjoiner label and boundary polyline.
Draw parcel boundaries (opt-in): tick the checkbox and each parcel (subject + adjoiners) is also drawn as a closed 2D polyline from the same pull, on the boundary layer you name (default V-ADJ-PARCEL, ACI 8, auto-created). Re-runs replace a parcel's boundary in place; multipart parcels / holes draw as multiple rings. A reference/coordination line from county mapping, not survey-grade. The sibling command VDCADJPARCELS does boundaries only, no labels (Run / Pick / Clear).
Profiles: Horry County SC, Georgetown County SC, Brunswick County NC, NC OneMap (statewide) built in, each a swappable endpoint + label layout. Add county… (under the county list here and in Adjoiner Parcels, Buffer Yard, Site Data, Site Snapshot) sets up any county with a public ArcGIS parcel layer: paste the layer address, map the fields from dropdowns, Test, Save, kept in %APPDATA%\VDC\Gis\county-profiles.json.
Label content (all on by default): one checkbox per standard line, PIN / Parcel #, TMS, Owner (header + name drop together), Deed reference. A toggled-off line stays off through Refresh, unlike hand-deleted text (which comes back). Unpublished lines grey out per county; all-off is refused.
Dialog: profile, adjoiner buffer (ft), label subject?, pull zoning?, label content checks, refresh existing labels on Run?, label layer (+ auto-create), text height (default 0.1), deed-reference abbreviation (DB:_, Pg:_), base font (default Tahoma) / color, and per-line font / ACI color / height factor across all six lines.
Settings at %APPDATA%\VDC\AdjoinerLabels\settings.json (env VDC_ADJLABEL_SETTINGS).

Dialog

When to use it

Building the adjoiner / now-or-formerly block on a plat or exhibit without manual county-site lookups.
Re-verifying ownership on labels placed weeks ago, right before issuing (reFresh).

How to run it

Run VDCADJLABEL - the dialog opens with the mode dropdown (Run / Refresh / Pick / Clear); pick the county profile, buffer, label layer, and text height; set the Text formatting options; tick 'Also draw parcel boundary polylines' if you also want the parcel geometry; click OK.
Pick a point inside the subject parcel - the tool resolves it by point-in-polygon (works over xrefs), queries the county service, and labels the subject plus every adjoiner at its centroid.
Move labels wherever they read best - re-runs and reFresh update contents in place and respect your positions.
Before issuing, run VDCADJLABEL in Refresh mode to re-query every label and pull current owner/deed values. Use Pick to keep labeling parcels one after another - pick a point or type PIN at the prompt, Enter/Esc to finish - or Clear to remove all labels.

Options

County profile: which public GIS service and label layout to use - Horry County SC, Georgetown County SC, Brunswick County NC, or NC OneMap (statewide NC) come built in. Any other county with a public ArcGIS parcel layer is added with the dialog's Add county... button (paste the layer address, map the fields from dropdowns, Test, Save).
Adjoiner buffer (ft): parcels within this distance of the subject count as adjoiners even without a shared boundary - catches across-the-road and across-the-ditch owners.
Label subject parcel: whether the subject itself gets a label, or only the adjoiners.
Label layer / text height: where the MText goes and how tall (default 0.1 in); the layer can be auto-created. Runs reconcile PER LAYER - a Run only updates/removes labels on its own layer, so keep one adjoiner set per sheet on its own layer (freeze the others per viewport) and re-runs never delete another sheet's labels; a shared edge parcel gets a label on EACH sheet's layer.
Owner-name order: on by default - counties publish SMITH JOHN A; the label renders JOHN A SMITH. Entities (LLC/INC/TRUST), couples with &, and ambiguous names stay as published. A trailing 'et al' (and others) rides at the very end: HENSON ROGER ETAL -> Roger Henson Etal, not Roger Etal Henson.
Title-case owner names: on by default - the county publishes ALL CAPS; the label reads title case (BROADWAY AT THE BEACH PALACE TRACT LLC -> Broadway at the Beach Palace Tract LLC). Legal acronyms (LLC/INC/LP) stay upper; a name already mixed-case is left alone.
ALL CAPS: off by default - force the entire label uppercase when a plat style calls for it (wins over title-case).
Abbreviate deed reference: on by default - the deed line reads DB:_, Pg:_ instead of 'Deed Book _ Deed Page _' (page omitted when the county publishes none).
Label font / color: one base font for every line (default Tahoma) and a base color (ACI; 0 = ByLayer). Per-line overrides still win.
Per-line formatting: font, color ACI, and height factor per template line (e.g. Tahoma, 1, 1.25); blank inherits; reFresh re-renders older labels to the current formats. Six adjustable lines, including the zoning line.
Pull zoning: off by default - adds a 'Zoning: <code>' line from the county's GIS where published. Horry reads a separate zoning-district layer (a point-in-polygon lookup per parcel); Brunswick reads it off the parcel. The checkbox greys out for counties with no zoning, and the line collapses when off or blank.
Label content: all on by default - one checkbox per standard line: PIN / Parcel #, TMS, Owner ('Current Owner' header + name drop together), and Deed reference. Untick a line to leave it off EVERY label - and unlike hand-deleting the text, a toggled-off line stays off through Refresh. Lines the county doesn't publish grey out; an all-off combination is refused.
Refresh existing labels on Run: on by default - Run re-pulls and overwrites matched labels and removes orphans. Turn it OFF to ADD newly-appeared adjoiners only while leaving existing labels untouched, so your hand-edits survive a re-run.
Also draw parcel boundary polylines: off by default - draw each parcel (subject + adjoiners) as a closed 2D polyline from the same GIS pull, on the boundary layer you name (default V-ADJ-PARCEL, ACI 8, auto-created). Re-runs replace a parcel's boundary in place; Clear removes labels AND boundaries. Companion command VDCADJPARCELS does boundaries only, no labels.

Watch out for

Network required - the queries hit the county's live ArcGIS REST service. An outage or a changed county field schema shows a short message on the command line; nothing is placed from stale data.
A label line whose GIS fields come back empty is dropped (e.g. a county that doesn't publish deed book/page) - that's by design, not a bug.
Run mode with 'refresh existing labels' ON removes labels whose parcel dropped out of the fresh result (same profile only) and overwrites matched labels; turn it OFF to add new adjoiners only and keep your edits, or use reFresh for update-in-place with no inserts or deletes.
You pick a point in the subject parcel - there is NO window step. This tool queries the county service for the subject plus its adjoiners, so a huge (whole-county) drawing is a data question, not a scope one: just pick your lot.
Parcel boundary polylines are drawn straight from county GIS mapping - a reference/coordination line (typically +/- a few feet), NOT a survey-grade or located boundary. Do not use them where a located boundary is required.

Related: Lot Front · Lot Table · Stake Lots