Land Surveyor Blogs

I've been thinking a lot lately about sharing a story here on Land Surveyors United so that other land surveyors may learn more from me, because I realize that I have something to share.  I imagine that many of you might be in the same place with this.  Perhaps we have not yet begun to feel the crunch that will be involved when there becomes a scare and our industry is compromised due to fading into other technologies.  So today, I am going to make an attempt by writing a story about writing a s

CHAIN! The weakest link (in the chain)

by: Deward “Karl” Bowles,

Texas RPLS no. 4966

  Certain magazines (trade magazines) have purported to represent the current interests of our profession by exposing Land Surveyors to new technologies and philosophies regarding our industry.  These magazines have been around for decades in many cases.

   These so called trade magazines have treated us for years and years now to articles where the authors (pundits) of these articles chide us insisting that Land S

How wide is a property line?  You may be asking yourself "Did he say that out loud"?  Well, Yes I did.  And here are the potential reasons why; see which one you can identify most with, then think about your own reason and add to the list.  I will list the first three (3) and you provide the rest.  First comment should be begin with the number four (4).

1. It has no width.  It is an abstract line;
2. It is as wide as the corner markers are;
3. It's as wide as you and your neighbor agree that it is.

Wanna see the type of surveying equipment your fellow land surveyors are using around the world?  More specifically... would you like to know what kind of Total Stations everyone is using?  Take a look at the comments on the following thread for some very valuable insight from all corners of the earth.

We asked:

What is the best total station you used in the field up to now ? And why ? 
Please explain in few sentences from your experience 

Land Surveying is Timeless:

Shared Experience is Education for those new to the field. There are no shortages on complaints around the internet about newbies relying too much on tech. However, the veteran land surveyors are just now- for the first time in history- sharing and documenting their expertise from the field. Students and new surveyors simply have never been exposed to the methods and approaches to land surveying rooted in history. If you think you have nothing to contribute, consider

Summary: Surveyors have been working with the elements of geometry, trigonometry, regression analysis, physics, engineering, metrology, programming languages, and the law. These work require software that offers unique strengths that will make data collection on land survey jobs easier and more efficient for land surveyors and other professionals.

Surveying has been an element in development since the beginning of recorded history. Most forms of construction require it. It is used in transport, c

The first part of this series we looked at what a Surveyor is, and does.  This article will look at what a Land Survey is, and will briefly look at the history what is called the Public Land Survey System or PLSS which is the basis of most non-colonial surveying.  This article will by no means be exhaustive--but will be longer than my normal posts.  The story you are about to read is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent...

The Public Land Survey System or Rectangular Sur

During the past decade I have been fortunate enough to travel all over North America and one of my recent survey work related trips brought me to Labrador for the first time.The survey took place in various places throughout the Mealy Mountains and surrounding coastal areas,

Mealy Mountains located in the southern portion of Labrador, is situated south of Lake Melville, north of Sandwich Bay and borders the Labrador Sea. The mountain range encompass over 26 thousand square kilometers of forests,

Examples of Land Surveyors in The Bible by William D. Hatfield

Have you ever wondered why there are no movies about land surveying?

Think about it, we are constantly in the field, sometimes in unexplored areas, by definition we are the first ones in preparing the ground for everyone else, once the map of the area is ready.

We are constantly encountering dangers related to the places we work, be the jungle, the highway or the overpass.

When I saw the Indiana Jones' movies I could not imagine a more boring profession than archeology. These guys spend their lives

In this excel file I have used some excel formula to draw the centerline chainage of an alignment in Road , Railway or tunnel project.

Here is the file Chainage Plotting.xlsx

The chainages will be drawn instantly with the help of excel and AutoCAD.

You can make your alignment chainage very accurately with the help of our Excel sheet without typeing a single one by yourself.

You just have to paste your coordinates into the given columns and you need to put the chainage interval in the respective colu