[GIS] Drawing polygons from legal descriptions using bearing directions in ArcMap

arcgis-desktopcogolegal-descriptionmetes-and-bounds

I have many property descriptions I need to add into my GIS that are described using bearings (such as South 01 degrees 41'46" West for 25 feet, then continuing in a different bearing to create a closed area of land). I understand that there may be errors due to projecting these since they are based on a ground-based local plane, but I am simply trying to get the drawing aspect down right now. Unfortunately, the majority of these descriptions are not in a spreadsheet or any type of digital format (such as the guy here was using COGOing Legal Descriptions), they are either on paper or old scanned documents dating as far back as the 1980s.

I tried using the Traverse tool in the COGO toolbar, but when I enter Direction and Distance (using the example above, typing in the format S 01-41-46 W, 25 ft) the "Add" button is greyed out and I am not able to add the line. I am using an empty line feature class and a starting point from a corner of a section/township/range. The ESRI help section on creating traverses seems quite straightforward, I feel like I'm missing something.

Is the traverse tool the right one to be using?

Best Answer

Likely, you'll need to change the angular units setting for editing, as found here. enter image description here

Now, you can use the traverse window as such:

enter image description here

If you look here, you'll see there is shorthand for entering bearing and distances, so S01.4146W becomes 01.4146-3 where the -# corresponds to the quadrant, with the quadrants being defined as (1=NE 2=SE 3=SW 4=NW)

Related Question