The traverse defines the sequence of courses or calls and the style determines the wording and formatting to use. The legal description is then written to the appropriate report, like the Legal Description Report or Traverse Report where it can be reviewed, edited, printed and saved.
Because you have complete control over the points in a traverse and can edit the legal description styles, you have complete control over how TPC writes your legal descriptions.
Along with a few simple rules like whether or not to include sideshots and point descriptions, traverses create a natural link to legal descriptions.
Commencement Point Chain
TPC calls the sequence of points that define the Point of Commencement to the Point of Beginning the Commencement Point Chain (CPC). TPC determines this from the sequence of control points in the traverse, but you can also specify your own CPC in the Traverse Properties Commencement dialog.
Creating Legal Descriptions for Selected Traverses
•From the Traverses Manager, select the traverses you want legal descriptions for and choose Tools | Traverse Report.
•TPC displays the Traverse Report dialog from which you can choose to create legal descriptions for the selected traverses.
Including Stations in Legal Descriptions
•The stations computed and displayed for a traverse can be used in a legal description written for that traverse. See Adding Stations to Legal Descriptions.
TPC ships with several default styles which you can use or modify to create your own personal styles.
Phrases
TPC includes more than two dozen phrases that each correspond to a different part or geometric configuration of a legal descriptions. The are phrases that add the name, description and area of a parcel to the legal description, commence and end a legal description, identify special courses like tangent and radial curves and so on.
Phrases are the heart of TPC's legal description writer. By editing each phrases to say what you want, the resulting legal descriptions will say what you want.
Here is an example of TPC's phrase when the first call from the point of commencement is a straight line: Commencing at a Point of Commencement<START POINT BEING>; Thence <LINE DIRECTION>, a distance of <LINE LENGTH>
The angle brackets <> are place holders for data you want to include in the phrase. All the other text can be whatever you want it to be.
Place Holders
In the Phrases example above, the <LINE DIRECTION> placeholder is where TPC will insert the bearing or azimuth for that course. The place holder <START POINT BEING> adds the description, if available, for the point of commencement.
Settings
TPC includes all the settings you need to create the formats you want for directions, lengths, units, decimals, abbreviations and capitalization.
You'll also find settings like [x] Single Course per Line and [x] Numbered Courses that can make your legal descriptions easier to review and edit.
Legal Description Definitions
Legal descriptions employ special terms like radial curves, tangents, cusps, Point of Commencement vs Point of Beginning, etc.. The definitions of these terms are important in understand when and how certain phrases are used.
As a rule, TPC uses these terms as defined in Writing Legal Description - In Conjunction with Survey Boundary Control, Wattles, copyright 1979 by Wattles Publications.
Legal Description Reports
TPC writes it's legal descriptions to a report. Reports are word processing documents which can be edited, printed and saved.
When writing a legal description for a single traverse, TPC creates a Legal Description Report. When writing legal descriptions for multiple traverses, TPC includes the legal description in the Traverse Report.
Geodetic Positions
TPC can include geodetic positions in legal descriptions.
Phrase Driven Legal Descriptions (58:00) - In TPC Desktop, you have complete control over how TPC writes legal descriptions by defining settings and phrases. We walk you through how it works and how to make it work for you.
Phrase Driven Legal Description Output (32:33) - We take an in-depth look at TPC’s Phrase Driven Legal Description writer output for all of the tangent, curve and spiral options.
