Geography 243 - Exercise 5d

CONVERTING AND PLOTTING TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION IN ARCVIEW 3.X

Objectives

1) To learn a new way of creating spatial features - translating technical descriptions

which is in bearing and distance to georeferenced polygons using different tools in
Arcview
2) to implement/run scripts/commands, and
3) to add new extensions.

Encoding the Technical Description

The technical description of a piece of land usually appears as a list of corners of the land
and described as " From tie point (a point of origin – usually given as x,y coordinates) to corner
1,750 meters, N 50° 25'' E, corner 2 is 800 m N 137° 50" W.." Encoding a bearing-and-distance
TD into your GIS is a meticulous and time-consuming task especially if you need to input
hundreds of technical descriptions. Since you are dealing with so many details, there are always
a lot of chances to make some typographical errors. This exercise allows you be able to edit your
encoded data and make the process of plotting the corners of a piece of land easier.

For the exercise you have a PDF of the Proclamation paper of the Hinulugang Taktak
protected area, from which you will get the sample technical description.

1) Point of Origin. The first thing to do is to determine from what known point is the survey of the
corners of the boundaries of a defined area tied to. A sample is taken from the Hinulagan Taktak
proclamation as shown below.

In this case the known point is referred to only as BLLM 1 of the map of Antipolo Rizal.
You would to call the Land Management Bureau to give you the coordinates of BLLM 1 in
Antipolo. Be sure to give them complete details such as BLLM number of what area (it could be
San Mateo, Cainta, etc). Sometimes the coordinates could be given right away.

2) Filling in the Conversion table. The table below shows the format of the table that you need
to populate with technical description to do the exercise. It also explains what each column
means and how to fill it up. The sample conversion is in the SampleConversion.xls file in your
exer5c folder. The columns with green color are the only ones you need fill in.

D column E F G
A Column B Column C Column Column Column Column
Bearing to
Segment MINUTE AZIMUTH SCRIPT
ID DISTANCE DIRECTION BEARING S value FORMAT
Input the Input Input Input (compute (compute
Segment Distance DIRECTION Input minute d already d
ID Ex: A1, in meters as shown in BEARING as s of using already
A2, A3 or (if in the example shown in the bearing formula using
B1, B2, B3 kilometers below: example provided) formula
convert to Due East = below: provided)
meters) NE Due East = 0
N 45° E = NE N 45° E = 45
Due North = Due North =
NW 0
N 65° W = N 65° W =
NW 65
Due West = Due West =
SW 0

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 Geography 243 - Exercise 5d
CONVERTING AND PLOTTING TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION IN ARCVIEW 3.X

S 15° W = S 15° W =
SW 15
Due South = Due South =
SE 0
S 60° E = SE S 60° E = 60

Input the technical description using the sample table sheet. The formula for the final azimuth and
the script format are in the cells with the pink color columns. You can replace the data in the cells
in the green column in the sample table with the values of your TD.

Use the Proc. 412 Hinulugang Taktak proclamation document as a source of your technical
description. Follow the notes and instructions above in filling the TD conversion sheet which is in
excel.

Creating the TD txt file

1. The last column in the SAMPLECONVERSION worksheet named FORMAT contains an

embedded formula in each cell that will arrange all the values Distance, degree and minute
values in acceptable format in the ARCVIEW script. The cells will show you already the
formatted TD.

2. Highlight all the values in the format column and click COPY. Open a Notepad file, and then
paste the values you just copied. Save it as Taktaktd.txt file.

The .txt file you have created in Notepad should have the technical description arranged as seen
below: REMEMBER! THE BEARING MUST BE IN DEGREES and no spaces in between
B1,3375,356,0
B2,2375,259,0
B3,9000,319,45
B4,10375,1,45
B5,2437.5,116,45
B6,21243.1,67,59

Create your starting point

1. Open Arcview and open new View.

2. Create a point theme (TAKTAK_PT_GCS) containing the location of your starting point. You
have the staring point already given in the sample table. In the sample table the starting point
that was obtained from the Land Management Bureau is in DMS format. Convert this to
decimal degrees then create a point shapefile using this coordinate (use shape properties
tools to edit the coordinates of your point).

3. Since the TD distance data is in meters you then have to make your starting point in meters.
You then have to project your TAKTAK_PT_GCS to TAKTAK_PT_UTM which is in meters.

4. After projecting the starting point shapefile select the point.

Loading the script and running it

1. Go to the SCRIPT interphase. Click on the SCRIPT drop down menu and select Load text
file. A dialog box will appear prompting you to load the avenue script batchpointcreation.ave
(this is in your Exer5c folder). This will be loaded into your Script TOC (table of contents).
Compile the script by clicking on the check mark icon.

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 Geography 243 - Exercise 5d
CONVERTING AND PLOTTING TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION IN ARCVIEW 3.X

Before running your script, you have to make sure that the last thing you touch was your view
where your taktak_pt_utm is. To have all the tables and view you have opened be seen all
together, go to the Window menu bar and click on Tile. Click the View where you have the
taktak_pt_utm.shp then click the script again.

2. Its time to click on the running man icon to run the script. A reminder will be flashed -
Please read this carefully!!! Attention! You must select an initial point from the theme. The file
structure must be: aStationID,aDistance,aBearingDegree,aBearingMinute

3. Click the ok button and wait a few minutes for a dialog box prompting to load the bearing and
distance text file.

In a matter of seconds (depending on the number of points you have) the points will be drawn on
your view. The points generated will automatically create and input the following attributes of
each point in its attribute table.
§ Station ID
§ DistancetoNextStation
§ BearingDegToNextStation
§ BearingMintoNextStation
§ XCoord
§ YCoord

4. Click on the on the View Extent icon to see all the plotted points.

Translating the points to a polygon

1. Add an extension called xtools. Minimize Arcview program first and open windows explorer
and copy the xtools.avx file from the Exer5c folder and copy it in your
C:\ESRI\AV_GIS30\ARCVIEW\EXT32. Go back to Arcview.

2. In Arcview, click on your XTOOLS dropdown menu. Look for the tool, MAKE ONE POLYGON
FROM POINTS and click on the tool. Answer the questions in the dialog box.

Name the new polygon file Taktak_extent_utm. You have now created the
extent of a land from a series of bearing and distance data.
END

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 Geography 243 - Exercise 5d
CONVERTING AND PLOTTING TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION IN ARCVIEW 3.X

Note: Original instructions from Lyes Mokraoui creator of the Batch point creation script were
expanded by Trina Galido_Isorena (Mar032004). See conversion of survey technical description
to bearing distance format (file name)

Title: Batch Point Creation

Filename: BatchPointCreation.ave
Source: http://www.gis.com.my/scripts.htm
Creator: Lyes Mokraoui