Is there a straightforward way to encode a survey description of a parcel in a text file that can then be imported into GRASS as a vector? The type of description I am talking about looks something like this (where the numbers are degrees/.minutes/seconds)...
"Beginning at [a defined point], thence running North 40-35-00 East 1,125.90 feet to a point, thence turning and running South 01-01-13 West 288.89 feet to a point, thence turning and running South 58-18-45 West 179.33 feet to a point, [...] , thence turning and running South 83-41-12 West 36.69 feet to the point of beginning."
On Aug 25, 2010, at 10:27 AM, Dwight Needels wrote:
Is there a straightforward way to encode a survey description of a parcel in a text file that can then be imported into GRASS as a vector? The type of description I am talking about looks something like this (where the numbers are degrees/.minutes/seconds)...
"Beginning at [a defined point], thence running North 40-35-00 East 1,125.90 feet to a point, thence turning and running South 01-01-13 West 288.89 feet to a point, thence turning and running South 58-18-45 West 179.33 feet to a point, [...] , thence turning and running South 83-41-12 West 36.69 feet to the point of beginning."
When I have done this I computed the boundary as a series of points using a spreadsheet, created a csv version of the points and their coordinates, and then imported the ascii points file. A bit cumbersome, but then doing anything with a legal description can be challenging.
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Dwight Needels <NEEDELS@translucida.com> wrote:
Is there a straightforward way to encode a survey description of a parcel in
a text file that can then be imported into GRASS as a vector? The type of
description I am talking about looks something like this (where the numbers
are degrees/.minutes/seconds)...
"Beginning at [a defined point], thence running North 40-35-00 East 1,125.90
feet to a point, thence turning and running South 01-01-13 West 288.89 feet
to a point, thence turning and running South 58-18-45 West 179.33 feet to a
point, [...] , thence turning and running South 83-41-12 West 36.69 feet to
the point of beginning."
On Aug 25, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Markus Neteler wrote:
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Dwight Needels <NEEDELS@translucida.com> wrote:
Is there a straightforward way to encode a survey description of a parcel in
a text file that can then be imported into GRASS as a vector? The type of
description I am talking about looks something like this (where the numbers
are degrees/.minutes/seconds)...
"Beginning at [a defined point], thence running North 40-35-00 East 1,125.90
feet to a point, thence turning and running South 01-01-13 West 288.89 feet
to a point, thence turning and running South 58-18-45 West 179.33 feet to a
point, [...] , thence turning and running South 83-41-12 West 36.69 feet to
the point of beginning."
for turning this into to true coordinates, then perhaps v.in.ascii.
Markus
Fantastic!
I can bring the survey description in as a series of points by piping the output of m.cogo to v.in.ascii, as described in the manual. However, I had some difficulty running the shell script to import as a vector line map (I am running William Kyngesburye's 6.4RC6-3 on Mac OS X Leopard). It fails (as does the v.in.lines script) because 'tac' is not available on Mac OS.
I found a 2 year old defect report (Ticket #181) that discusses this problem in some detail. As described there, I replaced the tac command with 'tail -r', which worked. What is the status of a general fix for v.in.mapgen, v.in.lines and v.in.garmin? If it will be awhile, it would be nice to include the 'tail -r' tip for Mac OS users on the m.cogo manual page. Also, a m.cogo | v.in.lines piping example would be useful for non-Mac OS users.
One other thing that I have not been able to figure out is how to automatically close the line vector into a polygon to create an area for the parcel. Given the small number of vectors involved it is easy enough to manually edit each vector to close it, add a centroid, and convert lines to boundaries. However, is there a good way to accomplish the closing automatically? If so, is this something that could be added as an option in m.cogo (or perhaps a v.in.areas wrapper script that automatically takes care of all of the steps to close and generate areas)? Or perhaps even a general v.in.cogo script that imports a cogo.dat formatted file with options for bringing it in as points, a line, or an area.