Measuring a Land Parcel

People selling land in Second Life tend to try to make the parcels rectangular, because buyers like rectangular parcels. They're easier to understand, and that can make them easier to build on.

But that doesn't always work out. To name just one reason why a parcel may not be perfectly rectangular: it could border on a Linden Road, and thus have one irregular side. To make the number of square meters come out exactly to one of the Tier Limits (512m, 1024m, 1536m, etc.), it might be necessary to have some other non-straight-line sides, too.

To measure, you can right-click the ground and choose Edit Terrain. Clicking the ground again will make a small, 4m by 4m yellow square show up. Technically you could make a lot of these and add up all the 16-square-meters together, but counting individual 4 x 4 (16m) squares can be difficult because each disappears as the next is clicked, and it's easy to lose track.

A fairly quick way to be sure you've got the right length, along one side of a parcel, is to do the right-click and Edit Terrain, then do one click in a corner to be sure you've got the 4m by 4m width selected---but then to extend the rectangle (still 4m wide---be careful, it's easy to accidentally widen it to 8m) from one end of the parcel's side to the other. Then whatever number shows in the Edit Terrrain window---divide it by 4.That will give you the length of that side.