Sketching For Cama Systems (tax Assessment)

[goingvirtual]

I work in a tax assessment office, and my main responsibility is entering information from plans for new construction and other projects. The problem I have is that the sketch program used by our CAMA system is not capable of handling complex sketches like in this image, but areas cannot be entered "floor by floor" as is done in Apex and other sketch programs. For example, in our system a 2 story area over a crawl space would be labeled "2S-CR" and a second story overhang would be "2SOV". We also need to separately enter living areas depending whether they are located over garages, basements, concrete slabs, etc. When I used Apex many years ago when I worked as an appraiser, each floor was drawn separately and I don't believe there was a way to sketch properties so that multi-story areas could be segregated. Is that still the case or is there a way to do this?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Randall Garrett]

Hi Mike,

FWIW, I am very familiar with the issue(s) you are describing and I am happy to try and help. Please know, however, that I stay away from "marketing" our products on the forums I contribute to, so I'll not go into how/why Apex might be your best solution. As a former appraiser, I am also not very good at salesmanship, LOL...

If you will PM me with your contact info, I will coordinate with you to do a one-on-one video session to go over your items so we can better understand your particular situation and issues and then show you how well our product(s) fit (or don't.) I have been in the real estate appraisal business for way more than half of my life and am also a 25+ year professional member of IAAO, so I will be able to relate to your items with respect to actual field inspection, sketching, and related issues. Also, I can go over some options to consider with respect to your CAMA system, none of which would cost you or your jurisdiction any money since we provide integration tools for the vast majority of jurisdictions and their CAMA providers.

Anyway, give me a way to contact you and I will personally get back to you and try to help. If you cannot leave me a PM or are reluctant to post your info here, let's coordinate a time for be to be available to take your call via our 800 number and we can start by phone. I want to make sure you are not dealing with a "salesperson" with no actual "hands on" appraisal experience, especially when it comes to the sometimes unique and sticky issues revolving around mass appraisal and data integration in CAMA.

Oh, and there absolutely is a way to draw in either "floor by floor" mode or "stacked" mode... I'll show you what I mean when when we get together.

Regards,


-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+

/end/

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Hopefully no one sees this as marketing by @Randall Garrett because his advice has been incredibly useful to appraisers on the forum. That sketch looks like it would drive me to drink.

 

[goingvirtual]

Hopefully no one sees this as marketing by @Randall Garrett because his advice has been incredibly useful to appraisers on the forum. That sketch looks like it would drive me to drink.

Luckily, I had the building plans which included all of the angles. I never could have done it based on an inspection.

Mike

 

[EddieB]

Looks like the architect had a drink or three

 

[Randall Garrett]

I forgot to mention earlier that the images in the thread listed below are of the app that is being used by several counties right now. Note, however that the version we used to push the tablet/monitors is the one which one would download/install from the store. We produce a tool which lets the CAMA system embed the sketcher in their app, so they can (and largely do) control how it looks. The overall sketching functionality is the same unless the CAMA provider either disables a feature, or is not using the latest version of the tool. Like other Apex products, we are constantly improving it, adding items users request, fixing bugs, etc. Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to those who are curious about a CAMA product to at least see a shot of the app since it's not something we advertise to the public ATM. There is no reason folks can't use the app as a "stand-alone" product, nor the tool be embedded in Insurance/Fee Appraiser/whatever Software programs, but most of the systems out there today are the older "legacy" type systems which require software written for "full Windows", etc. - i.e. the "bloated" systems I refer to from time to time...

Thread is here: https://appraisersforum.com/forums/threads/windows-tablets-for-fieldwork.191490/page-75 Specifically, the pics are in post #475

Hope this helps! Let me know if you want/need a better picture - i.e. running on a regular Surface Pro (vs. the little $400 unit used in the picture) or to illustrate some feature/functionality you want/need.


-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+

/end/

 

[Randall Garrett]

I just asked Brian to send me a screen shot from the app loading up one of his test files. This file is one drawn by a customer many years ago . They sent it to us because it was erroring out. We found the problem was in the tool we used to list out the Defined Areas. We simply never imagined that a customer would use the app to draw such complex properties. Once we changed the component settings, it loaded up just fine. We still use this file for testing. FWIW, this file has 149 Areas, totaling 200,830.6 SF and on the lesser/slower of the Surface Go tablets (4GB, 64 GB eMMC Storage) it loads in about 1 second! We realize that not many of you do this sort of property very often, but you could - and I hope this answers whether or not it could handle the file depicted in the first post. Oh, and the file also contains the satellite view embedded, but it is not shown here as it is "turned off" for this shot.



-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+

[Edit] - Made a change for a typo and also noticed what appeared to be a (minor?) rendering issue but upon checking with Brian, it turns out that it is in the original file. Do any of you see it? Where's Waldo? ;-)

/end/