Free to read
Guides
Longer pieces that take one subject all the way through, with the arithmetic worked in full. Where a guide shows a traverse or a curve, the numbers were generated by the same calculators this site publishes - so you can reproduce every table on the page.
- How to pass the Fundamentals of Surveying examA realistic eight-week study plan for the FS exam: what to master first, how to drill computation under time pressure, and what the final week should look like.
- COGO basics every survey tech needsCoordinates, azimuths, inverse and forward, latitudes and departures, closure, area and intersections, with worked numbers and the sign conventions.
- US survey foot vs international footTwo feet differ by exactly two parts per million. Where they came from, why State Plane feet are usually survey feet, and how to tell which one a dataset uses.
- Traverse closure explainedAngular closure, latitudes and departures, misclosure and the 1:X ratio, compass rule against transit rule - worked end to end on one five-sided traverse.
- PLSS for beginnersTownships, ranges, sections and aliquot parts: how the rectangular system was laid out, how to read a description, and why sections are rarely 640 acres.
- An error theory primerBlunders, systematic and random error; standard deviation and standard error; propagation in quadrature; weighted means and level-loop closure.
- Compass rule vs transit ruleTwo ways to spread a traverse misclosure, and one assumption behind each. When the compass (Bowditch) rule is right, and when the transit rule is.
- Bearings and azimuths without losing a quadrantThe four conversion rules, why every computation runs on azimuths, and the quadrant errors that turn a good traverse into a wrong one.
- Horizontal curve components, worked end to endR, Δ, T, L, C, M and E on a simple circular curve, plus stationing and a deflection table - one curve carried from the plan sheet to the stakes.
- Vertical curves: finding the high and low pointEqual-tangent parabolic curves worked in full: grade change, K value, external offset, and the turning point that decides where water goes.
- Area by coordinates: the shoelace method and DMDTwo ways to compute the area of a closed figure from coordinates, why they always agree, and what a disagreement is actually telling you.
- State plane coordinates explainedZones, false origins, grid scale factor, elevation factor and the combined factor - what a state plane coordinate is and how to get back to the ground.