How to turn a recorded plat into a drawing.

There are two ways to turn a recorded plat into a CAD drawing: redraw it by hand from the calls on the sheet, or have software rebuild the geometry and review its result. Either way the goal is the same - editable linework whose lots close, traceable back to the record.

The manual way

1. Pull the recorded plat from the county and read the whole sheet first: the boundary, the lot calls, and where the line tables, curve tables, and legend live.
2. In your CAD package, traverse the outer boundary from the calls - bearing and distance per course, curve data (radius, arc length, chord) where called.
3. Draw each lot the same way, resolving table references (an “L23” or “C7” on the drawing means a trip to the table for its value).
4. Check closure on the boundary and on every lot; hunt down any misclosure - usually a transposed digit or a missed table lookup - and fix it.
5. Add rights of way, easements, and monument annotations from the sheet.

For a subdivision plat with dozens of lots, this is hours of drafting, and the errors only show themselves at the closure check.

The automatic way

Upload the plat to TerrainPlot’s Plat Builder. It performs the same steps - reads the calls, resolves the tables and legend, rebuilds each lot, checks closure on every one - and returns a review view in roughly 20 to 60 minutes. You compare each rebuilt lot against the record and accept what’s right; accepted lots import as editable shapes and export to DXF, SHP, or PDF. Running a plat is free, and you only pay for results you accept.

The judgment stays yours either way: software can propose geometry and flag what doesn’t close, but the surveying decisions - and the stamp - belong to the licensed surveyor.