What are "Metes & Bounds?

See also Metes & Bounds

First lets be clear that no one here is a surveyor. We are software engineers implementing a surveying routine. We welcome comments and suggestions that would help make this subject more clear to our users.

Metes & Bounds are used to describe the shape and size of a plot of land.

It might be useful to take these "Metes & Bounds" off a deed or property description and draw a plot from them.

It might be useful to calculate the area and acreage of the described area.

Metes designates the distance of a line segment. In Home Plan Pro, the distance can be in feet/inches, Feet with decimals, or mm in metric mode.

Bounds indicates the angle of the line segment.

Bounds are made of three elements:

a Direction must be either North or South.

a Bearing must be either East or West.

an Angle in degrees between 0° and 90° You can also add Minutes and Seconds for more precision.

Example:   

N 00 E  500' = Due North

N 45 E  500' = North East

N 90 E  500' = Due East

You can see that this system covers two quadrants, or 180 degrees. Everything north of Due east and due west.