Drawing Plats Using Metes & Bounds

[wiltonco]

I would like to use Visio to draw real estate plats from legal descriptions; typically given in surveying Metes and Bounds.  Does anyone know of an add in to Visio that will allow entering surveying descriptions in Metes and Bounds for drawing surveying plats? 

[Lars-Erik]

For other people like me that went like  what did he just say?
Info1
Info2

Though I'm afraid I don't know about anything that will do this out of the box, could you maybe describe what you want to do a bit more ( for people who know nothing about land surveying ). That way we might be able to point you into the right direction.
Maybe an attached image of what a drawing should look like ?

- Lars

[Visio Guy]

Hi wiltonco,

I know exactly what you mean, since I wrote the add-on for Visio 4.0 that did just what you need. Problem is, I can't find it in Visio 2007, so I'll have to check what happened to it, and if it is still somewhere to be found.

It may be that it was removed from the product as far back as Visio 2002.

- Chris

[wiltonco]

Thanks for the quick response...

I am using Visio 2002 Pro at home and cannot find the option to input angles in surveying terms (ex. S45d18'23"W).  I have Visio 2007 Pro at work and cannot find the option in it either.  I think this would be a useful tool for drawing land plats using old legal descriptions from Deeds of Trust.  I am sure Visio will do a good job of drawing the plats if I can figure out how to get the angles in correctly.

[Visio Guy]

Hi wiltonco,

I've pulled a shape and the add-on out of an old version of Visio and zipped it as an attachment to this post. I was able to get it to draw an outline in Visio 2007, although some of the features behaved oddly.

In the original version, the add-on draws the property outline, and used the "metes and bounds shape" for each leg of the boundary - a nice dot-dashed line with "crash-test dummy circle/crosses" at each point. In Visio 2007, I get an outline, but the metes and bounds shape isn't placed along each leg.

Maybe you'll have more luck. Here are the instructions to get it to work with:

• Move the "Property Line" directory to your desired location.


• Double-click "Register Flex Grid.bat" to register the file "msflxgrd.ocx" which is used by the Property Line Add-on.
• Set Visio security to Medium:
•    Select Visio menu item Tools\Options
•    Select Security Tab
•    Select Macros Security. button
•    Change security from default High setting to Medium
• Change File Paths so that Visio will find the add-on:
•    Select Visio menu item Tools\Options
•    Select Advanced Tab
•    Select File Paths. button
•    Add complete path name to the "Property Line" folder under Visio (see above) to Stencils and Addons paths
• Restart Visio to use new path settings
• Open the "Property Line.vss"
• Drop the "Property Line" shape into a scaled site-plan drawing.
• Right-click the Property Line shape and choose: "Create Property Outline..."
• A form should appear where you can enter metes and bounds information.

[Stevedore]

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, often removes a feature that we relied upon when updating their software.  Same thing with Autocad DXF files - support gone.  Now we scour the net for conversion software that actually works.

Visio Guy, I too would love a copy of your macro, but I don't see your zip file attached.  Possible to email?


Thanks,

Steve Smith
Custom Site Plans
Steve Smith [ at ] ByteOne [ dot ] com

[philippec]

You have to be logged in to see it.
I am sure this is no idea from Visguy, probably a default in Simple Machines Forum.

[Lars-Erik]

Certain options require you to be logged in:

- Posting
- Seeing someone's e-mail address
- Seeing / downloading attachments
- Loads of other things

All of these are default settings from SM-Forum, to make sure the default forum setup is at least somewhat protected against abuse.
The attachment downloading might be a good one to set to public.

P.S. Steve, google and every other search engine can see these forums. posting your email address like that might not be smart

[Stevedore]

Thanks, guys.

After logging in I was able to download the zip file.  Works great with my Visio 2007 - drew the metes and bounds shapes and added the text showing the azimuth and distance.  I didn't have to do the scurity step on my setup either.  The problem I had was when I made the entire property outline a group and rotated it to get the longest property line on a horizontal grid-line.  Visio assumed that the top of the page was north and recalculated all the angles.  Is there a way to tell Visio where I want north to be?

Stevedore

P.S.  Lars, sometimes I weigh the disadvantages of more spam with the possibility of drumming up some site plan business.  Perhaps this forum is not the best place to find more customers. 

[Lars-Erik]

I changed your email in the post so atleast bots wont read it as an e-mail as easily

Now about your problem, i remember its posible to rotate the canvas compared to Visio, if its using the page top as "north" this wont help. but if its using the top op "Visio" as north this might work. One small problem, I don't remember how to rotate the canvas

[Visio Guy]

I remember building this functionality in...where o where was that feature now...

Got it!

If you open the Annotations stencil, located under File > Shapes > Visio Extras, you'll find some North arrow shapes on that stencil. This stencil also opens with the Visio Site Plan template, and probably a few other "plan" templates.

If you drop a North arrow shape on the page, then rotate it, you can right-click the shape and choose "Use for Property Lines". This sets a cell in the page's ShapeSheet called User.visNorthAngle, which the add-on probably respects (I didn't try it, but you can!)

[Stevedore]

Thanks, that worked great.

[navyitc]

The Register Flex Grid.bat file won't run on WIN7 with Visio 2010....any ideas?

Help is much appreciated!

[Visio Guy]

Yeah, I think that add-on was created with Visual Basic 2. The libraries are getting very, very old!

[dannyd.scott]

Thank you for sharing your solution for Metes & Bounds!
Greatly appreciated!