I thought the purpose of and the requirement for grid ties was for retracement and I always try to base all of my boundary surveys on grid, making it really easy to follow. However, lately it seems that a lot of the surveys that I'm following show a grid north arrow but no grid coordinates or tie to a grid monument. Is this keeping the coordinates "in house" on purpose or an oversite?
I might establish control and basis of bearings for a boundary job by reference to a VRN, or by getting an OPUS position for my GPS base station. Neither of these methods involves a local brass "grid monument". Especially in the case of the VRN there is no singular monument to point at. Even if I position my GPS base with an instantaneous autonomous position I'll still have a "grid" basis of bearings. These are all valid means to the intended end.
Tying any survey to a physical brass grid monument would be rather inconvenient in my area. There are very few still in existence, fewer still in GPS'able locations.
So if you establish control via VRN or OPUS solution why not show the grid coordinates on the survey?
I only show Lat Longs on my surveys for filing. NAD 1983 (2011), Or NAD 1983 (1993) are examples. As far as "grid" what "grid"? Unless you're surveying true north all the points have some type of "grid". 10,000 x 10,000? That's grid. UTM? State Coordinate System?
We've been doing this a long time, the older State Plane coordinates don't hold up very well. I frankly would rather not see them on a plat, newer ones are much better once GPS came along, but tying to NGS monumentation set out for NAD27 is always problematic and moving forward the coordinates are going to become moving targets.
If you're going to do coordinates today, lots of metadata should be published on the face of the plat. But the coordinates can never be authoritative.
Including coordinates on the map only reinforces the math over monuments mentality. For many it is an excuse to avoid observing important evidence.
Coordinates are near the very bottom of the hierarchy of data. Unless required by an agency, they will never be on my recorded documents. WA makes it so painful and burdensome (big surprise) that I'd be shocked if anyone ever put coordinates on a recorded document. ID is significantly more flexible in this regards.
