Type in the bearing and distance calls from a deed or survey — one row per call, starting from the point of beginning — and see the boundary drawn as an actual shape. Get perimeter, enclosed area, and a closure error check for free, instantly, in your browser.
Start at the point of beginning (POB). Enter each call as it appears in the deed: quadrant + degrees/minutes/seconds + quadrant, then distance. Example: "N 45° 30' 00" E, 150.25 ft".
| Deg | Min | Sec | Distance | Unit |
|---|
The point of beginning is placed at an arbitrary (0,0) — this tool has no way to know the real-world coordinates of the POB unless the deed also ties it to a known monument, so the shape, size, and orientation are accurate but the plot isn't tied to an actual map location.
A metes and bounds legal description walks the boundary of a parcel as a sequence of straight-line "calls," each one a compass bearing (a direction, like "North 45 degrees 30 minutes 00 seconds East") and a distance (like "150.25 feet"), starting from a fixed point of beginning (POB) and, if the description is correct, arriving back at that same point after the last call. This tool reads each call you enter, converts the bearing into a direction vector, walks the calls in order starting from an arbitrary origin, and draws the resulting polygon — exactly the shape a surveyor would get by walking the same calls on the ground with a compass and chain.
The full formulas — how a quadrant bearing becomes an angle, how distance and angle become a plotted point, and how area and closure error are calculated — are on the How the Math Works page.
The calculator is pre-loaded with a simple four-sided lot as a demonstration:
| Call | Bearing | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | N 89°30'00" E | 200.00 ft |
| 2 | S 00°15'00" E | 150.00 ft |
| 3 | S 89°30'00" W | 200.00 ft |
| 4 | N 00°15'00" W | 150.00 ft |
Walking those four calls from the point of beginning returns almost exactly to the starting point (closure error effectively zero), encloses about 30,000 sq ft (≈0.69 acres), and has a 700 ft perimeter — a roughly rectangular lot, slightly skewed because the bearings aren't perfectly perpendicular. Click "Reset to example" to load it and see it plotted.
If a metes and bounds description is correct and was transcribed accurately, walking every call in order — each bearing and distance, in sequence — should bring you back to the exact point of beginning. In practice it almost never lands on the POB to the inch, because both the original field survey and any typing of the legal description introduce small rounding. The gap between where the calls actually end up and where they started is the closure error (also called linear misclosure). This tool reports it two ways: as a raw distance (how far off the last point is from the POB) and as a precision ratio (perimeter divided by closure error, e.g. "1:12,500") — the standard way surveyors express how tight a traverse closes. A ratio worse than roughly 1:5,000–1:7,500 for an urban/suburban boundary is usually a sign of a transcription mistake (a flipped quadrant, a transposed digit, a dropped minute) rather than genuine field error, and is worth re-checking each call against the original deed.
Deeds and surveys write bearings in a standard quadrant format: a starting direction (North or South), an angle between 0° and 90°, and an ending direction (East or West) — for example "N 62°15'30" W." Read it as: start facing due North, then rotate 62°15'30" toward West. The angle in a quadrant bearing is always measured from North or South, never from East or West, and it's always less than 90° — anything at or past 90° is written from the other reference direction instead (due east is conventionally written "N 90°00'00" E," not "E 0°00'00" N"). Degrees, minutes and seconds work like a clock: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to a degree. Distance follows the bearing, almost always in feet for older U.S. deeds (sometimes chains, rods, or meters in older or non-U.S. records — convert to feet or meters before entering).
More on reading a real legal description, including common phrasing you'll see in deed prose (like "thence" between calls and how curves/monuments are typically handled) is on the how to read a metes and bounds description page.