GridDeed: Metes and Bounds

GridPointDigital

About this app

GridPoint Deed turns a metes and bounds legal description into something you can check, draw and trust - in the field, in the office, or standing at the counter of the recorder's office.

Paste a description in and get it back course by course, with what the app understood shown directly above the words it came from, so you can see at a glance where a reading went wrong. Or enter the courses yourself and let the app write the description for you.

READ
Paste any metes and bounds description and see it parsed course by course. The app's reading of each call sits above the source text it came from, so nothing is hidden behind a guess. Bearings, distances and curve data are pulled out, the point of beginning is found, and approach courses from a point of commencement are kept separate from the boundary itself.

WRITE
Enter bearings, distances and curves and generate a properly formatted legal description, in a professional style with a header and closing.

CHECK
See the closure error, the precision ratio, and the area in square feet and acres. Curve elements are tested against each other, so a deed whose radius, delta, arc and chord do not agree tells you which figure is the odd one out - the single most common defect in a recorded description.

FIND THE MISTAKE
When a parcel will not close, GridPoint Deed works out which single course would shut it if corrected, and names the error rather than just the number: a decimal point in the wrong place, an East written where a West belongs, a call entered backwards. It is the method a surveyor uses on paper, so the answer is arrived at rather than guessed. When no single course can account for the gap, it says so plainly instead of blaming one.

PARCEL DRAWING
A plan view of the parcel with pan and zoom, arcs drawn as true arcs, numbered corners, and the tie line from the point of commencement.

POINT EXPORT
Corner coordinates as Number, Northing, Easting, Elevation, Code - ready to import into your survey software or drop into a drawing.

BUILT FOR MESSY REAL DEEDS
Recorded descriptions are rarely clean. GridPoint Deed handles degree symbols that came through as other characters, digits that ran together, commas used as decimal points, and the many ways a deed can say "thence". When a description can only be read by repairing it, the app tells you what it changed and why - a guess is never presented to you as what the deed said.

WORKS ANYWHERE
No account, no sign-up, no subscription, no advertising. Nothing you type leaves your phone - the app has no internet access at all. Save named records, and your work in progress is kept for you between sessions.

FOR
Land surveyors, title examiners, real estate attorneys, paralegals, right-of-way agents, and surveying students learning to read a description properly.

WHAT IT IS FOR
Descriptions that run a closed boundary and return to the Point of Beginning. That is what closure, precision and area are measured against, and what the drawing and the point export are built on. A run in from a Point of Commencement is read as a tie line and kept out of the figures.

WHAT IT IS NOT FOR
Aliquot part descriptions - the Northeast 1/4 of the Southwest 1/4 of a section - which divide a section rather than running courses. Easements written along a line to a Point of Termination, with the width or offsets stated separately afterwards. Lot and block descriptions, strip descriptions, and "less and except" parcels. If a description does not run a closed boundary course by course, this is not the tool for it.

GridPoint Deed does the arithmetic and the bookkeeping. The professional judgement stays with you: it is a tool for checking and drafting descriptions, not a substitute for a licensed surveyor's certification.

What’s new

Renamed to GridDeed. No changes to how the app works.