Michael T. asks:
How can I use ExpertGPS to survey my property lines?

It’s relatively easy to find all of the corners of your property using ExpertGPS. You’ll need a plat, mortgage map, or legal land survey of your property, showing the distance and bearing from each corner to the next. You’ll also need to find ONE corner or monument on your land, to use as a starting point.

Using your GPS or the mapping tools in ExpertGPS, mark a waypoint at the starting corner that you’ve located on your property. In ExpertGPS, right-click on the starting waypoint, and click Project Waypoint. This will bring up the Project Waypoint dialog, where you’ll enter the distance and bearing of each call in your survey map. Bearings are in True degrees, not magnetic, so you may need to add or subtract the declination angle for your area.

On the map, you’ll see a red preview line projecting from the starting waypoint. It shows you the property line leading to the next boundary corner, based on the distance and bearing you entered.

Check off the Move to Waypoint and Add to Route boxes. When you click Project, ExpertGPS will create a new waypoint at the property corner, and prompt you for the next call (bearing and distance). Move around the property in this way until you have entered all of the calls.

You can now send the waypoints and route to your GPS, and head out into the field to locate the property corners. Use the Go To command on your GPS to navigate to each waypoint marking the corner of your land.

Please realize that there are limits to the accuracy of your GPS receiver. This technique should get you within a few feet of a property corner and will help you narrow down where to search to find missing survey monuments. To create a legal land survey that you can use for selling property or establishing boundaries, you should consult a licensed land surveyor.

Trace your fields, or use your GPS to instantly calculate field area

ExpertGPS calculates field acreage down to the square foot. Instantly. Without any calculations or complicated math on your part. Just click and draw. Or upload waypoints or track logs from your GPS.
All you have to do is

download the 30-day trial of ExpertGPS

and follow these simple step-by-step instructions below.

SH asks:
I have 174 waypoints coordinates and I would like to calculate the area of the farmland based on those coordinates. How do I do that using GPS Expert?

Calculating Area of a Farm Field Marked with GPS Waypoints

Click Receive from GPS on the GPS menu in ExpertGPS. All of your GPS waypoints will be shown on the map. Use the Route Tool to connect the waypoints marking the corners of your field.

Show the Area of your Field

On the View menu in ExpertGPS, click Show Route List. Then click Select List Columns. Add the Area column. ExpertGPS displays the area of all of your fields.

Converting between Acres, Square Feet, and Hectares

To convert the area calculated by ExpertGPS between acres, square feet, hectares, or another unit, click Preferences on the Edit menu, and click on the Units tab.

Download ExpertGPS, and Calculate the Area of your Fields Now!

Download the free ExpertGPS demo and follow these simple step-by-step instructions to calculate the acreage of your land and fields.

John B. writes:
I’m mapping a 160 acre oil field water flood project, trying to map as best as possible the trench routes between the 45 or so oil wells and the 30 or so water injector wells, and the pumphouse.

In trying to do the best possible job, being able to pick up as many trenches as possible on aerial photography will be a big help. Already, with the trial version of ExpertGPS, I can see some of the main trenches.

My question is, is the photography in the trial version from Google Earth? Or, what would be the best photography to check for recent coverage and the highest resolution?

I am going to purchase ExpertGPS, GIS version. After getting this oilfield map done, there are 20 plus sections of leases to topsoil sample on a tenth of a mile grid. It is fantastic, to have zoomable aerial photo and topo coverage, and gridding ability, with automatically generated gps points, not to mention tracks. This is going to save alot of time over the method I was using; putting a plastic grid over the laptop screen to manually mark waypoints, using Topo software. Thanks for making a great product!

ExpertGPS Pro features USGS 1:24000 topo maps and 1 meter/pixel aerial photography for the entire US. These maps come from Microsoft’s TerraServer-USA. In addition to the nationwide TerraServer USA imagery, ExpertGPS also has more recent half-meter color orthophotos (aerial imagery) for select US areas. The image to the right shows ExpertGPS color imagery outside Galveston, TX.

You have several options for viewing higher-resolution imagery in ExpertGPS:

1. You can use the View in Google Earth command (F7) in ExpertGPS to instantly view the corresponding aerial imagery in Google Earth.

2. You can use the View Online command (F5) in ExpertGPS to bring up a Web map of any point you mark on the map. The ExpertGPS.com online viewer has links to several mapping sites, and shows a detailed color image like the one below:

3. Most states have free high-resolution color orthophotos that you can download on their state GIS Web sites. I’ve written several tutorials on how to make maps using free orthophotos from your state GIS with ExpertGPS Pro.

Ben C. needs help converting offshore and deep-sea fishing spots from an Excel spreadsheet into GPS coordinates he can convert to a .USR data file for his Lowrance GPS. Here’s how to import and download Excel data to your GPS using ExpertGPS:

Ben contacted me because ExpertGPS wouldn’t accept the latitudes and longitudes in his Excel spreadsheet. They are in a non-standard format, with two decimal points. Looking carefully, you can tell that these are actually degrees and minutes of lat/long, with a decimal point used between the degrees and minutes, rather than a space, or a degrees symbol. ExpertGPS can extract coordinates out of just about any format, but I had to modify ExpertGPS to accept this data. Download version 3.09 (or later) of ExpertGPS mapping software to convert this data.

Before copying and pasting the coordinate data from Excel into ExpertGPs, I followed these instructions for adding a new coordinate format to ExpertGPS, and selected degrees and minutes (hddd mm.mmmmm) and the WGS84 datum.

Importing the Excel fishing waypoints

I copied the three columns of data from Excel, starting on the second line since the first line contained a title that spanned all three columns. ExpertGPS wants to see actual data (or a header row) on the first line of the pasted data. I selected degrees and minutes, WGS84 datum.

On the second page of the ExpertGPS Import Text Wizard, I matched up the columns of data from Excel with the columns in ExpertGPS. Click Next, then Finish, and ExpertGPS displays a map of your GPS fishing spots, as shown below.

Sending Fishing Waypoints to your Lowrance GPS

To transfer your fishing spots to your GPS receiver, click Send to GPS on the GPS menu. If you haven’t yet told ExpertGPS which GPS receiver you’re using, click Preferences on the Edit menu, and add your Lowrance GPS, as shown here. Because this GPS uses a MMC/SD data card, you’ll be prompted to save a .USR file to your GPS memory card containing all of your fishing hotspots and waypoints.

Learn More about Fishing and Boating with ExpertGPS

To learn more about using ExpertGPS to map out fishing spots or to upload and download data from your Lowrance or Garmin chartplotter or GPS, read the Fishing and Boating tutorials on this site, or Ask the GPS Expert if you need help transferring waypoints, tracks, or routes to and from your boat’s GPS.

James asks:
How do I convert KML (from Google Earth) to SHP (in ArcMap)?

ExpertGPS Pro can import Google Earth KML and KMZ files, and then export them in shapefile format (.shp) so you can view your data in ArcMap or other GIS software. I’ve written a step-by-step tutorial on converting KML data to SHP using ExpertGPS Pro.

Steve K. asks:
I’m using your trial software to see if it’s right for me. I’m an architect and I need the ability to export to AutoCAD. As an experiment, I drew the metes and bounds of a particular parcel over the aerial photo map that loads automatically in the trial version. I did this by establishing waypoints and projecting each one to the next in series. Then I connected them all as a route, and then converted the route to a shape. Finally, I exported the shapes to .dxf, but when I open the file in AutoCAD, the shape is completely distorted. I’m not sure what’s causing this or how to remedy it.

The DXF drawings you export from ExpertGPS Pro use the coordinate format and datum you’ve selected within the program. Most likely, what’s happening is that you’ve got the coordinate format in ExpertGPS set to latitude and longitude, and so you’re seeing distortion when your CAD software tries to display lat/lon data as X,Y eastings and northings. There’s an easy fix, which you only have to do once: select a new coordinate format in ExpertGPS prior to exporting. You can set ExpertGPS to display coordinates in US State Plane coordinates, UTM, or pretty much any national grid coordinate system.

Ray K. asks:
I have downloaded property shape files from the Montana Cadastral mapping web site and want to place them on top of the Garmin TOPO 2008 MapSource map that in in my GPS to outline the property on the TOPO map, can you help me do this?

ExpertGPS Pro will import your property boundaries from the MT cadastral Web site, and allow you to send selected parcels to your Garmin as a GPS tracklog, which will appear over your TOPO 2008 MapSource basemap. You can then use your GPS receiver to locate the property boundaries.

In ExpertGPS Pro, click Import on the File menu, and then select the parcels.shp shapefile that you downloaded from Montana’s Cadastral Web site. Shapefiles from this Web site are in Montana FIPS 2500 state plane coordinates, NAD83 datum. If you haven’t yet added this coordinate format to ExpertGPS Pro, follow these directions to add a new GPS coordinate format in ExpertGPS.

Once you’ve imported the MT cadastral shapefile into ExpertGPS Pro, you can select the property boundaries you’d like to send to your GPS (as I’ve done above with the parcel highlighted in yellow). On the GPS menu, click Send Selected to GPS, and ExpertGPS will re-project the MT state plane coordinates for your property outline into GPS coordinates that your Garmin (or Magellan, Lowrance, or Eagle) GPS can understand, and send it to your GPS.

Your Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx will display the tracklog representing the cadastral property boundary over the TOPO 2008 basemap. You should now be able to use your handheld GPS receiver to locate your property boundaries and corner stakes.

Eugenijus K. needs help calibrating a map of Lithuania, and overlaying a grid in Lietuvos Koordinaciu Sistema (LKS94), the Lithuanian national coordinate system. Here’s how to do it using ExpertGPS:

Looking at this map of Lithuania, I can tell that it uses an equirectangular (lat/lon) projection, rather than the Lithuanian Transverse Mercator grid (LKS94). This is because the top left and bottom left corners have the same longitude (20 degrees East), and the top right and bottom right corners are the same as well (27 degrees, 30 minutes East longitude).

To get started, I created a waypoint and recented the Quick Map view in ExpertGPS on Vilnius, Lithuania. I always like to start calibrating a map with some data from the location the map covers. I did a search on Bing.com and quickly found the latitude and longitude of Vilnius, and created a waypoint with those coordinates.

To add the map to ExpertGPS, I clicked Open Scanned Map Library on the Map menu, and then clicked Add. I selected the .jpg file with the map image, and then entered the name of the map, and the projection it uses (Equirectangular).

Calibrating the map

I used three calibration points to calibrate this map. I always try to place the first point in the upper left corner, in this case, at 57 degrees North, 20 degrees West. I placed the second calibration point in the opposite corner, at 53N, 27 deg, 30 min W. Two points are usually enough to properly calibrate a map, and as soon as I added the second point, my waypoint for Vilnius appeared at the correct location on the map. If a third calibration point is required, I try to pick one of the remaining corners, in this case, the lower left one.

Adding the Grid Overlay

To add the Lithunia LKS 1994 grid, I followed these instructions for adding a new coordinate format to ExpertGPS, and selected the LKS grid as shown below.

As soon as I switched to this coordinate format, the grid lines in ExpertGPS switched from showing latitude and longitude to showing eastings and northings in Lithuania’s national grid. As you can see in the image below, the grid is centered on 24 degrees East longitude, which runs directly through the center of the country. Because the underlying map is still using an equirectangular projection, the grid lines to the left of the central meridian (24E) curve one direction, and the lines on the right curve in the opposite direction.

Learn More about Scanned Maps in ExpertGPS

To learn more about using your scanned or digital maps with ExpertGPS, read the Scanned Maps tutorials on this site, or Ask the GPS Expert if you need help getting your maps properly aligned in ExpertGPS.

Ryan S. asks:
How do I change an gps address to a longitude and latitude? my address is 25.00.75 80.22.42

Your GPS numbers are in Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds of latitude and longitude (DMS format). The screenshot to the right shows how you’d enter these coordinates in ExpertGPS. Notice that the coordinate format is set to DMS, and the datum is WGS84. If you don’t see this format in the Edit Waypoint dialog in ExpertGPS (or in any other coordinate entry dialog), click the Add button.

Converting DMS coordinates to degrees of latitude and longitude

After you’ve entered your DMS coordinates as waypoints in ExpertGPS, you can convert them all to degrees of latitude and longitude by returning to the Add Coordinate Formats dialog. On the Edit menu, click Preferences, and then click on the My Coordinate Formats tab. If Decimal Degrees (DD) isn’t listed, click Add Format, and add it, as described above.

Once you’ve got both coordinate formats (DMS and DD) added to ExpertGPS, you can switch back and forth between them. Here’s the same waypoint you entered using the DMS coordinates above, converted to decimal degrees:

Sending coordinates to your GPS

Of course, if all you are doing is transferring GPS waypoints to your GPS, you don’t actually have to change the format in ExpertGPS to match that on your GPS. ExpertGPS does the conversion automatically when sending waypoints to your GPS, so no matter how you enter the coordinates (DMS, decimal degrees, UTM), ExpertGPS will always send the data to your GPS so that it displays at the correct location.

More Coordinate Conversions with ExpertGPS

To learn more about converting coordinates with ExpertGPS, read the GPS Coordinate Conversion tutorials on this site, or Ask the GPS Expert if you need help converting your data.