Richard
Dude..channel the rage.
Azimuth?
We use Bearings and Feet because that is what the customer wants. The title insurance companies would not accept Azimuths andor Metric. Several years ago, when the DOT went Metric, they did plans in metric, but all the parcel boundary had to be feet. They now do everything in English units. With Azimuths, you have to document if they are North or South Azimuths.
😉
Rick
You're right. I get very put out and frustrated with RADU's superior notions about everything, especially when it comes to the differences between Aussies and Americans and surveying.
I suppose I should use a filter or something and just not click on it.
Seriously though...
(not directed at Loyal...but at the general responses)
Rage? I saw no rage in RADU's question. It sounds like a pretty legitimate question to me....(except it might have been a bit rhetorical)
Traditional I guess, but if we wanted tradition why are we using chains still? Chains seem like a good distance with the aliquot division into miles and simple conversion from square-chains to acreage.
I like azimuths. It is much easier for programming purposes as well. I have seen many mistakes with converting bearings, and/or rotating to a new bearing base. it is like (my own analogy) trying to work with feet, inches and fractional inches as opposed to decimal feet. It lends for a lot more chances for error when trying to add and subtract (feet and inches or bearings to angles).
Just some thoughts.
Tom
Rick
> I suppose I should use a filter or something and just not click on it.
I am way ahead of the curve on that one. Mr. Abutt has been making my blood pressure rise for years.
p.s I about fell out of my chair at the sanctimonious peacock comment 😀
Azimuth?
Weren't those DOT metric jobs fun. When they started doing them I felt they would be fine. After all, we were going to change to metric in the future anyway, right? And what did I care, I had been using the meter for years. But a funny thing happened on the way. The metric jobs were costing DOT about a 15 percent premium compared to a job using English units. So out went the metric, FINALLY! This year I finished up the last metric job and I'm not sad to see it go. Now I can say I really prefer the foot as a unit. And merging the cadastral from feet to meters is a real pain-more so than I expected. And azimuth/bearing-that's something I am completely ambivalent to. Either way is fine.
Doctors used latin as a secret language
One lawyer can make a statement of double talk that takes 12 lawyers 2yrs to fight over what the meaning is
Carpenters take one piece of wood, cut it into 97 parts to build a doghouse in several days because of curing glued parts shaped by specialized tools that all have some weird name that nobody remembers
Millrights can take a fine catgut and a micrometer and align the world
I think we surveyors can have our own secret bearings handshake, who cares if anyone else can understand it.
MY take on the use of bearings is that most original orientation was from the compass and its cardinal pointers.
> display devised in the day of the compass instead of adopting straight forward bearings from 0 to 360 degrees?
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> RADU
I started surveying in 1967 and did not know what a bearing was until 1976 when a surveyor I was working for showed me how to calculate angles from bearings.
And like Boundary lines, pre-data collectors, I used azimuths for stakeouts for setting corners and construction. I did this until 99.
Lawyers LOVE Bearings ...
They can do a paper subdivision of a rectangular parcel described in bearings without having to do that pesky arithmetic. Saves them the expense of hiring a Land Surveyor.
Tradition, Tradition - so says Tevye (remember Fiddler on the Roof?)
Perhaps we might back up a little to examine the situation. Cartesian coordinates, from some time in the early 1600's, are attributed to a Frenchman named René DesCartes. This system, still in use today in most if not all mathematical schools, has its directional origin towards the Orient, the east-where the sun rises, the x-axis. Directional values increase with counter clockwise rotation. Every computer and calculator at its base instruction level operates using this system.
Every survey calculation involving direction, every mathematical operation in that respect, has to be converted to-and-from bearings, as part of the North-East system, to radians in an X-Y system. Not only are directional senses reversed, that is clockwise for north and east and south and west - and - counter clockwise for north and west and south and east, [ever wonder why some people get confused with bearings?] but the United States surveying convention employs sexagesimal units degrees-minutes-seconds. Rarely, if ever, does anyone question the time, money and effort expended in the conversions. Who even gives thought to the costs incurred as a result of reversed bearing transcription errors and the costs associated with sexagesimal degree value computations?
Regardless of the costs in time, money and mistakes, US surveyors in general, are standouts, traditionalists and resistant to change. "We've always done it that way," is the refrain. "Don't fix what ain't broke," is another.
Surveyors use a legacy system, a classic. Coca Cola had to return to "classic." However, Pepsi Cola took over the market. In ancient times, scribes produced the scrolls. Gutenberg changed all of that with the printing press. So went the jobs for scribes. Detroit changed personal transportation from the "good-ole horse-and-buggy" to the automobile. It was Florence Nightingale, among others, who convinced hospitals to improve cleanliness and sanitation in deference to the status-quo unsanitary conditions.
When will surveyors change? What will make them do so? When will surveyors, supposedly professionals, tell, instead of supplicate to realtors, lawyers and courts, how to communicate and work with directions?
My personal preference would be to use meters and the X-Y system, a little tradition here, and instead of using degrees or radians, to use fractional parts of a revolution, counter clockwise. A quarter (0.25) revolution would correlate to a right angle, a half (0.5) to a straight angle, etc. I'll add anecdotally that I like the word revolution!
RADU, you may be in what northern hemisphereians label as "down under," but you've begun shaking up the so called upper part. Thanks.
Lawyers LOVE Bearings ...
Yes; typical deed; Commencing at the W1/4 of Section 22; thence south 500 feet; thence east 2400 feet to the point of beginning; thence east 250 feet; thence south 275 feet; thence west 250 feet; thence north 275 feet.
Then you get to go to the courthouse and field and try and make sense of the thing.
Azimuth?
You mean to tell me that the customer wants feet and tenths of a foot?
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Typing class 9th grade!
Sounds suspiciously like the French GRADS system where 400 Grads = 360 degrees.
Just for the record, Coke has a bigger share of the worldwide market in terms of sales, but Pepsi generates more revenue.
This is taking into account only actual "Coke" and Pepsi", not the affiliated drinks (Mountain dew, Fresca, etc., etc.).
Also, Pepsi's growth stats are better than Coke.
We use the 19th century vector based mapping data expressed in quadrant bearings in degrees, minutes and seconds and distances in US Survey Feet mostly because of tradition and that is the standard which is expected of us.
The reasons supporting the practice are numerous as expressed above.
Change may be warranted but is unlikely to be brought about by postings by me or anyone else on an internet message forum.
Richard: personally I prefer grads. All of my conventional survey computations are done using grads (no silly changing d.ms to d.d and back as with sexagesimal units) and meters. 0 to 400 (decimal), east is 100, south is 200, etc. But then, I am not talking about cadastral work, but rather engineering surveying. All of my career I have used azimuths. If I came across bearings, I usually converted to azimuths before I could visualize it.
Although not likely to happen (at least in my lifetime), I would welcome a change to the metric system in this country.
Here is a little something I noticed on TV yesterday...A commercial for some kind of commerative gold coin...they kept saying that it contained a FULL 14 mg of GOLD! Well, that is 1/2025 of an ounce of gold, or less than $1 worth per coin (currently about $0.64). Why do they stress that? Because your average american is too STUPID to know that 14 mg is a very small amount.
Easy Math = Fewer Errors
For those who are still using printed log and trig tables; the answer is that quadrant bearings yield look up quantities and inverse values between 90 and 0 degrees saving one math step.
Easy Math = Fewer Errors
If you are surveying with a compass then calculating the back bearing is as easy as changing quadrants, no math required.
I personally don't think it makes much difference; old deeds will be computed by keying the quadrant bearings into the computer rather than calculating the azimuth first then keying it into the computer if we somehow magically one day decide to use azimuths.
> display devised in the day of the compass instead of adopting straight forward bearings from 0 to 360 degrees?
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> RADU
We use South based azimuths here in Hawaii. I spent many years using bearings in California, but after some adjustments, I find using azimuths somewhat easier.
The older deed descriptions were based on bearings and chains, and written in Hawaiian, so sometimes you just have to approach a few certain jobs to this day with a spirit of adventure.