Some municipal boundary arcs (about 15% of the total) follow the edge of a road or rail right-of-way or a stream or river channel. The differences between the municipal boundary arcs digitized from those on the USGS quads and those created by snapping to the survey-derived coordinates are typically plus or minus 12 feet, although these differences are sometimes less and sometimes more. Boundary arcs from the existing USGS-derived municipal boundary data layer were then snapped to the survey-derived points. MassGIS used the state plane coordinates to 'generate' points in ArcGIS.

Staff from the Survey Section then converted the latitude/longitude coordinates to the NAD83 datum and also created a version of the coordinates in state plane coordinates with units of meters. MassGIS staff keyed the coordinates into a database that data entry was double-checked by staff from the Survey Section. MassGIS staff collaborated closely with staff from the Survey Section during the development of this data layer. They are named TOWNSSURVEY_ARC_GENCOAST and TOWNSSURVEY_POLYM_GENCOAST. Two other feature classes are available that use the inland survey-based linework but have a generalized coastline for faster display. When stored in geodatabase format, these four feature classes are organized in a feature dataset named TOWNSSURVEY, which includes the TOWNSSURVEY_Topology rules have been created to enforce spatial relationships among the POLY, ARC and PT layers. TOWNSSURVEY_PT - Points representing survey points.

TOWNSSURVEY_ARC - Lines representing municipal boundaries and coastline.TOWNSSURVEY_POLYM - Multi-part polygons representing inland and offshore areas, with one feature for each of the state's 351 municipalities.TOWNSSURVEY_POLY - Polygons representing inland and offshore areas.This layer comprises four separate feature classes:

Midas civil display element shape