Frequently asked questions
TerrainPlot is automatic plat redraw and deed-to-CAD software for land surveyors - it plots deeds, redraws recorded plats, checks closure against ALTA tolerance, and exports clean CAD. The surveyor reviews and stamps; TerrainPlot does the retyping.
TerrainPlot is a document-aware CAD workspace for land surveyors that plots deeds, automatically redraws recorded plats, checks closure, and exports clean CAD. The surveyor reviews and stamps; TerrainPlot does the retyping between the county PDF and the CAD file.
Land surveying firms - the office and project surveyors who prep deeds, plats, and ALTA title work, and the licensed surveyors who review and sign it. It's built for boundary and ALTA work, not field data collection or full CAD drafting.
A deed plotter plots a single legal description; TerrainPlot redraws the entire recorded plat, flags what doesn't close, and takes the job from county PDF to signed CAD. It's a full workspace - package intake, plotting, closure, geo-placement, parcel operations, closure reports, and CAD export - not a single-purpose tool.
Yes. Upload a recorded plat and TerrainPlot rebuilds the lot geometry and proposes the connections between lots; you review and accept, and the result imports into your project as editable CAD-ready shapes. Running a plat is free - you see the finished plat and its exact price before deciding whether to keep it.
Upload the deed or commitment and TerrainPlot extracts the courses and curves and plots them tip-to-tail on the canvas. It parses quadrant bearings, tangent and non-tangent curves, and points of beginning, and shows the shape so you can see whether it looks like a parcel or a typo.
TerrainPlot computes the misclosure and the precision ratio (for example 1/15,000) against ALTA tolerance and gives a pass/fail as each shape is plotted. When something doesn't close, it flags where, so you review the flagged calls instead of re-reading the whole deed.
Yes. TerrainPlot is built for the documents surveyors actually get - cursive deeds, low-contrast microfilm, multi-page title commitments, and long metes-and-bounds descriptions. Low-confidence reads are scored and flagged for review rather than silently guessed.
It tells you. Low-confidence reads - a faint digit, an ambiguous cursive bearing - are flagged in the review screen, and every call links back to the source text so you can check it in one click. Nothing is silently guessed, and nothing ships without your review.
Yes. Every plotted line links to the text it came from, and the recorded PDF is one click away. That traceability is what makes the output defensible when the survey is reviewed or challenged.
TerrainPlot exports DXF, SHP, and PDF. The geometry is CAD-ready for Civil 3D, Carlson, and ESRI.
Yes. TerrainPlot exports clean DXF and SHP that drop into Civil 3D, Carlson, and ArcGIS/ESRI. It deliberately doesn't try to replace your CAD drafting or field tools - it hands off clean geometry instead.
Yes. TerrainPlot exports a one-page closure report per parcel - the plotted figure, the call table, and the closure math versus ALTA tolerance - built to forward to a title officer or client.
No. Software cannot and should never make surveying decisions. TerrainPlot proposes geometry and flags issues; the licensed surveyor exercises professional judgment, reviews, and stamps. The surveyor stays in responsible charge.
The licensed surveyor who signs and seals it. TerrainPlot's job is to remove the retyping and surface problems early - closure, low-confidence reads, discrepancies - so the surveyor's review is faster and better-supported, not replaced.
Responsible charge - direct supervision, in some states - is yours to exercise, and every board defines it a little differently. What TerrainPlot does is make that supervision real: every call links to the exact text it came from, every flag and edit is visible, and the whole record of what was read and changed stays in the project. That’s a tighter audit trail than drafting sent to an outside CAD shop, which comes back as bare linework with no trail at all. You supervise work you can actually see, line by line.
Your work is yours. You keep ownership of the documents you upload and the geometry you produce, and you can export it to open CAD and GIS formats (DXF, SHP, PDF) at any time.
The platform is a flat subscription - $125 per device per month, or $1,250 per device per year. Plat redraws are priced per job by complexity, typically $10–60, and drawn from a prepaid balance; running a plat is always free and you only pay for plats you accept.
You can have any plat redrawn for free - send a plat and TerrainPlot redraws it, and you see the finished result next to its price before paying. It's a working proof on your own document rather than a time-limited trial.
Send a plat or deed and TerrainPlot will redraw it for free, back to you within one business day, reviewed by a human first. Or book a 15-minute demo and attach a plat, and it'll be redrawn before the call so the demo runs on your own job.