With today's technology, and probably 99.9% of plats being drawn in CAD, I cannot see why a curve would not be tangent. Having said that, I have had to, on occasion, fit in a non-tangent curve in a boundary for whatever reason, but I ALWAYS have the Radius, Delta Angle, Tangent, Arc Length, Chord Bearing and Chord Distance in my descriptions, and on my plats. I would also call it out as a non-tangent curve if that was the case.
It is no excuse not to include all elements of the curve table with today's CAD software. It generates it automatically in most cases.
I have to agree with Mr. Luke and Jimmy, when possible curves should be tangent. I worked on a complicated plat recently. Our client was selling a portion of rural property and the dividing line was going to be along a county road for which the record centerline was untraceable. The purchaser had hired another survey firm to perform a red neck road legalization centering the R/W over the current road location through a series of dedications, vacations and quit claim deeds. The other surveyor tied the existing roadway and created a centerline description without any tangent curves. Tangent curves could have been created for which the 24' paved surface and ditches would have easily fit in the 60' R/W. The county R/W agent approved the provided descriptions with out letting the County Surveyor's Office review the descriptions. The bad part was that not one of the curves was called out as being non-tangent.
Brad Ott, post: 455765, member: 197 wrote: Why?
Why would you post this plat(?). It hurts my little head to see so much wrongness in one place.
Daniel Ralph, post: 456020, member: 8817 wrote: Why would you post this plat(?). It hurts my little head to see so much wrongness in one place.
Because it is lonely suffering alone.
Daniel Ralph, post: 455748, member: 8817 wrote: I don't know how much from tangent the description is but let me guess; the preamble of the description cites something like the centerline of a ditch which is the following courses and distances...
Oh sure the ditch was located/measured in significant detail to warrant the non-tangent description. Its a ditch! And besides, that's what my fancy program said to do.
I suggest that the OP recommend that the description be rejected and that another be crafted that will not cause distress to the adjacent development and those who have to regenerate its location. And thank them for allowing you to review it.
As to "if the engineers are OK with"... I reject that premise. I don't know but a very small handful of engineers that are qualified to speak on the subject of legal descriptions much less craft one.
I was not implying that an engineer should have any input into a boundary description. Some curves, like railroad and highway curves have engineering reasons to be tangent. An original boundary based on one of these should be tangent. If a ditch was not built with tangent curves why should a boundary based on its description be required to be tangent. I just don't understand why, besides tradition, that a boundary curve needs to be tangent, assuming sufficient information is provided.