0.004

Before you answer, stop and pretend you asked the question first.

I'm thinking that the question is about adjusting measured distances by 0.004' to make traverses close?  I adjust my measurements using Least Squares, and that is the essence of what LS does. 

I suspect he is talking about adding or subtracting to the length of a line plotted in CAD. The labeled distance will remain the same if you add or subtract 0.004’ (Speaking of labeling to the hundredth). So for instance: if you plot a rectangular parcel form a recorded map or deed to one hundredth linear accuracy, and it does not ‘close’ by a hundredth in an east-west direction, you can add or subtract 0.004’ to the east-west courses to ‘perfect’ the closure without your labeled distances (record distance that you plotted) changing.  

I have found in Carlson Survey that the Crandall Polyline Adjustment compensates for a small misclosure when running in record plans in a useful way. It holds the bearings fixed and tweaks the distances by small amounts. Sometimes by more than 0.004' so the distances may not match perfectly, but this method reduces the misclosure of the interior parcels if I run in and adjust the perimeter first.

Yeah, the old days of returning the measurements has long vanished. Now it's all about manipulation. There was an agency that started writing descriptions with a tenth of a second and one thousand of a foot. They would "close" at the second and hundredth of a foot, but of course not to the given accuracy of the description. Chasing your tail is never-ending.

I love following one old timer; sure his bearings are nearest minute, distances are a tenth or an even foot, but his monuments are there, big pipes, easy to find. 

 I don't fiddle with lines to make them 'perfect'. I report what I measure node to node. If it's 0.004, or 0.04 different than the last PLS I'm calling them right...

Ive done it to get the minimum square footage of new lots in a subdivision, the planners in the City of Eugene were very particular, 4500 square feet minimum is just that, not 4499.999 square feet rounded up.

When the platting tech reviewing your plat comes back and says your boundary doesn't  close, by 0.004', or less than the width of the dimple, what are you going to do.

OCD is just an occupational hazard. 

There was a young young guy from TX on the old board… back when the discussion was .04’… who referred the the manipulators as “frightened fudgers “….

@rankin_file 

I believe that was Ty Olinghouse.

The 0.04 story started with me.  That goes way back.  A survey tech, who I knew well, was creating a tract adjacent to one I had created a few years earlier.  Out of all the bars I had set, he showed all but one as being exactly where I said it was.  That one happened to be adjacent, mathematically, to the tract he was creating.  His tract was longer than mine.  He then created a triangular gap between the two tracts maybe 1400 feet long with a base line of 0.04 feet.

I've noticed more and more with the era of GPS my checks to record monuments are often .02-.03' or less. I don't even change anything, I report R&M,,, depending on the circumstances. A while back I reported retracing a 1994 GPS sectional survey in 2010 and hitting everything by 0.04' or less. I was platting record dimensions and Mcmillimeter argued that I had to adjust it all (somehow). FFS!!!! That guy could sure troll. 

I'm not the guy that sweats half an inch in half a mile. 

@Holy cow- 

it wasn’t Ty- it’s was a licensee. Not Kris Morgan or Robbie Christopher - I kind of recall it was someone with first and last same initials… anyway, the exacta-mondo crowd is missing the retracement concept….

Posted by: @tickmagnet

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Does anyone else use a 0.004 nudge to their paper calcs to get perfect distances that match the record map.

90% of may maps are after 1960 so most can be perfect.

Its still satisfying after 40 years so am I OCD?

Sounds pretty ocd to me.  Unless you're dealing with some government blockhead then maybe it's acceptable.

But you realize how silly of an exercise that is, right?  Think of it this way-- at one point the ground at the grand canyon was about as flat as a checkerboard.

I record and measured just about everything and let other people reinvent the wheel if they want to.

OCD is real.  It is most apparent to someone who is watching someone else behaving in that manner.  Realizing your own OCD traits is much more difficult.  My first wife had a maddening need to clean the dining table, kitchen counter tops and stove top before she could leave the house to go somewhere.  You could have a kid with a dislocated shoulder, screaming bloody murder and she couldn't leave unless all flat surfaces were clean.

Being a perfectionist is basically the same thing.  It is what draws left-brain people to engineering and land surveying.  The answers to the test questions in your classes are correct or incorrect.  Meanwhile, an art student creates some piece of work that is judged differently by different viewers.

I'm CDO. It's OCD, but the letters are in order.

@gary_g    NBA star Jerry Lucas was an expert at CDO,  He played a mental game of taking names and words apart, putting the letters in alphabetical order and then attempting to pronounce them.  His own name was Ejrry Aclsu.  Wilt Chamberlain would be much more difficult.