Availability: All plans.
Whether a description will plot comes down to one question: does it give the courses, or does it point at something else for them. This page sets out the four outcomes and names which kind of description lands in each. Every other article in this group starts from these four.
Two ways in, and they take different input
Trace reads a legal description two ways, and the difference explains most of the surprises.
- The manual plotting editor takes calls, written in the editor’s own compact form, one per line. It is not a prose reader: a line that reads like a sentence from a deed is rejected. It is free on every plan and spends no credits.
- The AI document path takes prose. Upload a document, or paste a description with Textual Legal Description, and Trace reads it into calls for you. This is the path that spends a credit.
So “Trace cannot read my deed” is almost always a description typed into the editor instead of given to the AI. The words are fine. The doorway was wrong.
The four outcomes
Every description lands in one of these, and telling them apart is the whole skill.
| Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|
| It plots | The description carries enough direction, distance, curve or aliquot detail to build the geometry, and Trace builds it. |
| It does not plot | The language carries no geometry at all. Retrying does not change that, because there is nothing in the words to build from. |
| It plots but does not locate | The geometry is built and correct. The description reaches the ground only through a monument, a neighbour, a street or a recorded document, none of which Trace can turn into a position, so the tract draws and sits unplaced until you place it. |
| Part of it plots | Most courses plot and one or two do not. Trace marks the ones it cannot read and leaves them out, and reports figures for what is left. |
The last one is the expensive one, and it is worth reading twice. A description that fails completely gives you nothing, which is obvious. A description that half succeeds gives you a drawn boundary that looks finished, and the missing line is yours to find.
Where each kind of description lands
| The description | Outcome | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Every course gives a direction and a distance | Plots | Nothing to do |
| Directions given as azimuths, or as angles turned off the previous course | Plots in the editor. The AI path warns on turned angles | When a call will not plot |
| A course follows a creek, a neighbour’s line, a street, a corner of a section, or a line in another deed | That course does not plot | Calls that reference something Trace cannot see |
| A lot, a block and a subdivision, with no courses anywhere | Does not plot, and must not be typed into the editor | Lot and block descriptions |
| A spiral curve, or two arcs written as one course | Spirals do not plot. Two arcs in one course need splitting | Curves Trace cannot plot as written |
| Positions given as stations and offsets | Does not plot | Calls that reference something Trace cannot see |
| An area and a general position, such as five acres in the northwest corner | Does not plot. An area and a corner do not fix a boundary | Survey work, not a plotting problem |
| Courses tied to the world only by a monument | Plots but does not locate | My plot is in the wrong place |
| A PLSS aliquot description, such as the Northeast Quarter of Section 22 | Plots, and places in one step, because the description names its own section, township and range. Placing it this way needs Professional or above | Locating a PLSS aliquot description |
| The last course reads “thence to the place of beginning” with no direction or distance | Part of it plots, and the editor can solve the missing course | When a call will not plot |
What Trace does not cover at all
These are the shape of the product, not defects, and no retry or workaround reaches them.
- Plats, and lot and block descriptions. Trace works from metes and bounds tracts, aliquot descriptions, and easements described from a centerline.
- Spiral curves. There is no way to write one.
- Widths that change by station. A corridor width stated against a course or a described point is handled. One that changes at Station 15+00 is not.
Where a description needs measurement that no document in your hands carries, it is survey work. Trace shows you the checks; the reviewing professional does the verifying.
The one thing to carry away
Read the description looking only for the courses, before you spend anything. Read your description before you upload it is that read as a short procedure, and it takes about a minute.
Related
- Read your description before you upload it, the pre-screen as a procedure
- How to tell if a deed will plot, the same ground as a worked walkthrough
- Plot from a document, for getting a description to the AI
- Deed syntax reference, for every form the editor accepts
- Credits and plots, for what the AI path costs