Acheck Online — User Guide

Getting access

1. Sign in with your free Drawing Store account (enter your email, type the code we send you — no password).
2. You pay per check, not per month. One check unlocks one parcel: its area, sketch and report. A job of five parcels costs five checks. Typing courses and watching the plan view is always free, and your first check is free on a simple lot.
3. Buy more with Buy checks at the top of the page. Checking often? The Acheck Bundle gives a year of unlimited checks plus the Windows app (Acheck Desktop). The price is on its product page. The Windows app has its own 7-day free trial. Download it from the Acheck page, and on first start click Try it free for 7 days (no card; it needs the internet once to start). After seven days it asks for the email and order number from an Acheck Bundle purchase.

The screen at a glance

• Top bar — Mode (Bearings / Azimuths), Units (Metres / Feet), Job name, and the action buttons.
• Tabs — Courses (build and check a parcel) and Parcel Summaries (total areas across parcels).
• Parcels list — the list down the side switches parcels and adds, renames, copies or deletes them; a job can hold several.
• Courses table (left) — one row per line or curve around the parcel.
• .pci file box (under the table) — the whole job as text, one course per line. Type into it or read it; see ".pci files" below.
• Results (right, top) — Perimeter, Misclosure, Misclosure direction, Precision ratio, Area.
• Plan View (right, bottom) — a live sketch of the parcel with a POB marker, north arrow, and a red dashed line showing any misclosure gap.

Entering a parcel

1. Pick your Mode — Bearings (quadrant + angle, for example N 45°30'20" E) or Azimuths (whole-circle, 0–360°). Switching mode converts what you've already typed.
2. Pick your Units — Metres or Feet. Switching units converts every distance, radius, and arc for you.
3. For each course, fill the row (see the field guide below). Click + Add course for more rows.
4. Read your results and plan view — they update as you type.

Field guide (one row = one course)

Curves

A curved boundary is a chord bearing + chord distance + radius. The arc length fills in automatically. There are two curve types:

• Curve — the minor (small) arc between the two points.
• Bulge — the major (large) arc, that is, the long way around. Use this when the boundary sweeps more than a half-circle.

The arc check

A plan usually labels a curve with all three of chord, radius and arc — one number more than the shape needs. Acheck uses that spare number as a check. Type your own arc length and it works out what the chord and radius give, then tells you if the two disagree.

• Out by a little — it names the figure it expected, so you can see whether the plan or your typing is wrong.
• Arc shorter than its chord — impossible. It nearly always means the arc and chord were typed into the wrong boxes.
• Chord longer than the diameter — impossible. The chord cannot exceed 2R.

A flagged curve is still stored and still counts. The plan you are copying may be the thing that is wrong, so Acheck warns and leaves the decision to you. Leave the arc box empty and there is nothing to check — the arc is then worked out from the chord and radius.

Reading the results

Working with more than one parcel

A job can hold several parcels. Two tabs sit above the courses table:

• Courses — build and check the parcel you're editing (everything above).
• Parcel Summaries — add up the areas across parcels.

The parcels list

The Parcels list beside the table switches and manages parcels:

• Click a parcel to edit it. Double-click its name to rename it in place, and drag it up or down to reorder.
• A parcel that encloses the others is marked B. Its area is listed but left out of the total.
• New — name and add a fresh parcel.
• Rename — rename the current parcel.
• Copy — duplicate the current parcel (handy for near-identical lots).
• Delete — remove the current parcel (a job always keeps at least one).

Parcel Summaries — totalling areas

1. Switch to the Parcel Summaries tab and tick the parcels to include. Each area is listed with a bold Total Area at the bottom.
2. Each parcel needs its own check. An unpaid parcel is still listed, but its area stays hidden, and so does the Total Area until you unlock every parcel in the total.
3. Splitting a boundary into parts (PART 1, PART 2…)? Name the enclosing parcel so it starts with BOUNDARY. It's then listed as (boundary — not in total) and left out by itself, so the total is the sum of the parts only. There's nothing to set.
4. Click any row to show that parcel in the Plan View.
5. Print sketches (PDF) draws every ticked parcel, two across and down the page, with the name above and the area inside. A fifteen-parcel job prints on about three pages.

Buttons

• Sample — loads a demo parcel so you can see how it all works. The sample runs fully unlocked: area, sketch and report, without paying and without spending a check. Type your own courses over it and it locks again, because it's then your parcel and not the sample.
• Save / Open — store or reload the job as an .acheck file on your computer. On Acheck Desktop, Save also writes a .pci beside it (see ".pci files").
• Import .pci — load every parcel from a .pci file (the file the AutoCAD palette writes).
• Export .pci — write every parcel to a .pci file the AutoCAD palette can read.
• Clear — empties the table to start fresh.
• Print Report — opens a clean, printable closure report (course table + results) you can save as PDF.

.pci files

A .pci is the plain-text interchange file the Acheck AutoCAD palette reads and writes. Each parcel is its name on one line, then one course per line, then a blank line:

• A line: quadrant angle distance — for example 1 45.3020 100.000 (quadrant 1 NE, 2 SE, 3 SW, 4 NW; angle D.MMSS).
• A curve: quadrant chord-bearing chord arc radius — five values.

The .pci file box

Under the courses table sits the job as a .pci, live. It is a second way to enter parcels. On a job with hundreds of lots it is faster to type a whole course on one line than to click box by box.

• Type a parcel name, press Enter, then a course per line. Press Enter to finish a row and the parcels list, the table and the plan view follow. A blank line starts the next parcel.
• The parcel under your cursor is the one drawn in the Plan View.
• Type in the table instead and the text follows. Whichever one you are typing in leads.
• A line that does not read as a course is named in the status line under the box and left in the text for you to fix.
• Drag the bar between the table and the box to give either one more room; double-click the bar to reset.
• The file has no field for a curve's +/− side, so every curve read from a .pci comes in as +. Flip it in the table if the plan says otherwise; the box keeps the sign you set.

On Acheck Desktop

Save writes job.acheck and job.pci together, and from then on the .pci is rewritten as the job changes — the box says Writing to job.pci. Click Stop to stop. Import .pci does not link the file it opened; nothing is written over a file you merely opened.

Tips & troubleshooting

• A field turns red? The entry couldn't be read — check the format (angles are D.MMSS, not decimal degrees).
• Huge misclosure? Usually one wrong quadrant or a transposed digit. The Misclosure Direction points you at the bad course.
• Curve area looks off? Try the other curve type (Curve ↔ Bulge) or flip the +/− sign.
• Start over quickly — click Sample, study one course, then Clear and enter your own.

Acheck Online · The Drawing Store · Questions? drawingroom@rogers.com