Tractplotter.com Development Blog

I just had a realization about the area error (”+/- X acres”) that I’ve been computing.  The way it is currently calculated is very simple.  Take the perimeter error percentage (also displayed in the results), multiply that by the computed area, and voila.  A simple way of expressing the potential error of the calculated area.  If your closure is 10% of the perimeter (now that I think of it, there are two ways of thinking about the perimeter; inputted perimeter (total distance of all deed calls inputted) and final perimeter (including any computed closure); the current implementation is the first way, which in one sense is correct, but in another sense overstates the percent error; I guess it’s better to err on the safe side and call the error bigger than it might actually be) (sorry for all the parenthesis folks, this is just how programmers think) then the area +/- is 10% of the calculated area.  Simple, no?  Perhaps too simple.

One of the first things you learn in geometry is that area is proportional to the square of linear distance.  The perimeter is a linear distance; the area is proportional to the square of the perimeter, therefore the calculated area error should be proportional to the square of the perimeter area.  As soon as I think of a way of implementing this without going completely nuts with the acreage error, I will fix it.

By the way, my reason for including this figure at all is just to draw the your attention to the fact that you have a problem of some severity with your plot.  Competing products (*ahem, GGDP*) will just adjust the calculated acreage, based on the error, and never inform you of that fact.  So if you input a square tract 200ft on a side, you will get 40,000 sf; but if you make an “error” and make one of the sides 205ft instead of 200, GGDP will tell you that the actual acreage is MORE than 40,000 sf!  I know that a lot of sophisticated analysis probably went into solving this problem in GGDP, but in my opinion this is the wrong way to go, and in fact it is a fairly ludicrous proposition.  I would rather leave that sort of judgment call to the user instead of having a one-size-fits-all calculated solution.  If the plot doesn’t close properly, the user can decide whether the acreage is right or not, and whether it should be adjusted up or down, or even whether the deed calls themselves should be altered to fix the problem (I know we have all come across transposed digits, missing digits, or otherwise mutilated deed calls).  I would rather give the “right” acreage, based on the input data, than include a “fudge factor” that in no way should be taken for gospel.

By the way, another thing that I do in terms of stating the error is truncate the number of significant digits in the acreage results.  If there is an error of > 10%, you only get 2 significant digits; 1% - 10%, 3; 0.1% - 1%, 4; and <0.1%, 5 significant digits.  This is just another kind of a “seat of the pants” error detection that I have included.  So if your tract doesn’t close by 20%, Tract Plotter is not going to tell you that it’s 42.385 acres.  It’s going to be 42, and even that is probably too generously precise, but I find less than 2 significant digits to be pretty worthless.  On the other end of the curve, more than 5 SD’s is probably better than any surveyor could ever trust his instruments.  But, as always, I leave the final decision up to you, as you can always see the full calculated value, out to as many SD’s as the computer can handle, by clicking on the “Show Full Precision” checkbox.

I definitely want to improve this significant digit algorithm in future versions, taking into account the precision of all entered data.  But, for now, I think it serves its purpose, and I hope that you find it useful.

First off, I would like to thank everybody who has commented so far.  It is gratifying to see that the site is being put to good use.  Every comment is useful or thought-provoking in some way.  For example, now I am considering offering “lifetime memberships” or something like that that would be a one-time cost as if you had bought a piece of software.  As for making something available for download, I have considered that, but it would be beyond my technical capabilities, at least at this point.  Just a note, my main reason for starting this site in the first place was that I wanted to move entirely to the Macintosh platform instead of Windows, and deed plotter software was one place where I couldn’t see any alternatives on the Mac.  I had experience with PHP web programming before, so it was a natural step for me to put it on the Web.  Of course it has some limitations, but with things like the iPhone becoming more common, there are now more and more places where Tractplotter.com is usable.  Even if you’re standing in a courthouse in the middle of nowhere, chances are you will have cell phone reception and will thus be able to use your iPhone or other Web-enabled smartphone.

As for progress on the site: I am sad to say that there has not been much progress since the last blog entry.  My job, some out-of-town trips, and a family member in the hospital have kept me away from working on the site as much as I would have liked.  I am now setting an end-of-August target date for moving everything to the new server facility, and the rewrite for end-of-September.  Full “pay site” functionality will probably not happen before the end of the year.

Moving on to other topics…. Marty asked in comments for my insights on mineral acres.  Well, there really isn’t too much to say about mineral acres.  Usually you talk about mineral acres as being distinct from the actual acreage of a tract; i.e., we are talking about a partial mineral interest.  For example, maybe somebody owns a 50% mineral interest in a 10-acre tract.  This means that they have 5 net mineral acres, but the important thing is that those 5 net mineral acres are inseparable from the entire 10-acre tract.  It is like owning a half interest in a company; you can’t say that the inventory is yours and the physical plant and intellectual property is the other owner’s; you both own a 50% interest in the entire thing.  Or if you are a 20% partner in ownership of a racehorse, you cannot say that you own the head while the other partners own the rest of the body; you each have a 20% interest in the entire horse.

This is why we often see mineral interests referred to as “undivided” mineral interests.  To beat a dead horse, no pun intended, if you own the aforementioned 5 net mineral acres, you cannot point to any particular 5 acres of the 10-acre tract and say that you own those 5 mineral acres while somebody else owns the other 5.  If you wanted to, you could approach the other mineral owner(s) and negotiate to convey your 50% to them on 5 of the acres, and they would convey to you their 50% on the other 5 acres, and then you would have a 100% mineral interest in 5 acres and so would they (instead of each owning 50% of 10 acres).  Either way, it’s the same net mineral acreage, and this is probably not a terribly practical scenario for most people.  But, it could be done.  I’m only using it here to illustrate the concept of partial mineral ownership and how mineral acres are derived from the total acreage of the property.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing that I write here or elsewhere should be construed as constituting legal, financial, or any other kind of advice.  My knowledge is limited to Texas, which takes a “bundle of rights” view of mineral ownership, and I know that all of the different states have their own take on mineral ownership.  Texas’ body of oil and gas law is generally acknowledged to be the most established and complicated out of all the states’, as Texas was where the oil boom originally occurred, and oil and gas concerns have continued pretty consistently to the present day.

Welcome to the Tractplotter.com Development Blog. I am the owner/developer/proprietor of TractPlotter.com. I also have a “day job” as a landman in the Barnett Shale area of Texas. This is what prompted me to write my own tract plotter, as the existing solutions all seemed to be lacking.

I would like to fill you all in on the plans for the site. First off, the part that you see right now for free will always be there, for free. It will even be improved somewhat, but it will always be a little watered down. However, it will probably be sufficient for 90% of your tract plotting needs. It is for me! Most of the time I just want to know three things about a metes and bounds description: 1) Does it close? 2) Is the acreage correct? 3) What does it look like? The existing free site that you see can do all three of those things pretty well. I know I have a bug or two in the acreage calculations, but fortunately they don’t pop up in most tracts.

But I do want to eventually make money with this site. So I will have a paid section as well. You will be able to log in with your user name, and all of your plotted tracts will be there, organized in folders that you can arrange as you like. You will be able to use arcs in your tracts. You will be able to join multiple plots together, as many as you like, in an easy-to-use interface. You will be able to alter the scale of any plot that you make, to match any scale you desire when you print it out. You will be able to share your plots with other users that you work with. I am even planning to allow overlays to Google Maps so that you can lay out your tracts on photographs of the actual terrain. These are just some of the features that I’m planning to include in the final version. Please comment below if you have a certain feature that you’d like to see, even if it’s one I already mentioned. I’d like to get an idea of which features are most useful to other users.

When I do finally release the pay site, it will have a small monthly fee. I am thinking $5 or $10. Or maybe $5 and $10, if I can figure out some way of having two levels of service. I think the monthly fee is the way to go. All of the competing products that I know of are $150-$200, and they are standalone pieces of software. They have to be installed on one computer, so they can’t be used on any computer with an internet connection. They generally don’t include upgrades in the purchase price, so if you want the new version then you will have to pay again. And they will not see the level of support that I will be able to provide. Bug fixes, custom features, you name it, and it will be a lot easier for me to do than any of those other guys. Of course I will offer a discount if you wish to pay yearly, and I will also offer multiple user discounts.

I am working right now on a full bottom-up rewrite of the site. I have a “hidden” area that I have used for my own personal needs for over a year now that has already implemented most of the features I listed above. Unfortunately I have come to the realization that the current site’s acreage calculations are unreliable in a basic way (again — fortunately this occurs infrequently! but it is indicator of an underlying problem), and therefore almost the whole thing will need to be rewritten. So I am in the middle of that right now. I am also in the process of moving the server from a shared hosting solution to a dedicated, colocated server. I have bought the physical server and rented the colocation space for it, but I still have yet to get the server fully configured and installed at the facility. Hopefully I can get this done in the next month (by July) and have the site transition to the new server during that time. The rewrite and availability of the pay site will take a little longer, but hopefully I will be able to fix the known calculation bugs in the free site within the same timeframe of the server installation.

So there you have it, that’s the current status of the site and a broad idea of the goal that I’m working toward. Please feel free to comment with suggestions, problems, ideas, bugs, and anything else that you might want to say. I realize that I have not been communicating effectively on the site status, and the whole site has been pretty mysterious to everyone up to this point. I hope to change that with this blog, so at least you will know that yes, there is an actual person here, and yes, I am working on the site

Thanks for reading!