The Draw Survey tool is a way to enter property surveys into the theme you are editing as line features. You must first enter the survey into the Survey Entry dialog and save it as a text file (see
'Survey Entry Dialog overview').
Then you can click on the Draw Survey tool and browse for the survey text file and it will draw to the theme you are editing. Alternately, you can click 'Cancel' when browsing for the survey text file and enter the survey coordinates one-by-one. This is only recommended for very short surveys; for longer surveys it is a good idea to enter them using the Survey Entry Dialog and save them to avoid typographical errors and make it possible to redraw them if the results are not what you wanted. Entering lines from surveys is an extremely accurate way to digitize parcel boundaries in that the shapes are more exact in their proportion than with other methods of data entry. Sources of inaccuracy include the rotation and placement of the resulting lines, which rely on the user's ability to move and rotate the lines into place based on background images and themes. If your survey covers an extremely large land area, the projection you are working in may cause some distortion due to the curvature of the earth--this is not usually a noticeable problem. Most surveys will need to be rotated due to differences between magnetic and true north and other inaccuracies. Magnetic north changes from year to year, and while some surveys may indicate (on the north arrow) what the declination of magnetic north was at the time of the survey, it is usually necessary to rotate and move the survey lines based on where they abut features such as roads and streams in background themes or images (such as USGS topographic quads or orthophotos) or existing lines or parcels in your edit theme. If the parcel you are editing is 'floating' in the middle of a wooded area with no landmarks, it can be difficult to know where to place it. Typical values for rotation are between 10 and 16 degrees, but can range between at least -22 and +22 degrees. Some modern surveys are rectified to true north, but may still need to be rotated a degree or two. Use the
'Rotator'
tool to rotate selected lines; positive rotation angles rotate the lines counter-clockwise and negative values clockwise. Use the
'Mover'
tool to move the lines around.
