What should students get for learning to find directions and degrees?
Buy a liquid-filled compass from a stationery shop or online; it makes it easy to set zero degree and read degrees. Also download Google Earth on a laptop or computer and install a compass app on the mobile, which works only on Android phones, not on iPhones. Geo Vastu does not sell a compass of its own.
Related questions
A client's location shows coordinates. What do I do with them?
Copy them and paste them into the Google Earth search bar, which takes you to the place. Then draw a straight line along a wall of the building to get the degree. A degree taken from the centre is wrong; the centre only tells you which direction a room is in.
How are the small marks on the compass read?
Each small line is 2 degrees. If the needle falls three lines after North, the tilt is 6 degrees; five lines after North means 10 degrees.
How can I know which direction I am facing?
Use a compass (disha suchak yantra); it shows the direction your face is pointing.
How do we know that a tilted-looking map has been drawn to zero degrees North?
Open the location in Google Earth with North set at the top and compare. If the plan looks identical, it is drawn at zero degrees and is zoned without rotating the chakra; about 90 percent of such tilted maps are drawn that way. If in doubt, rotate the map until one straight side is straight and take the tilt from that side.
How is the compass set up before reading it?
Simply line it up. The dial has a North-South line and an East-West line; turn it until one of them lies exactly straight with the mirror line and the axis line. The more precisely it is straight, the more accurate the reading; a crooked setting can read 20 or 30 degrees for the same house.
If Google Earth shows 350 degrees, how should North be marked on the plan?
In a regular plot you can set the zero directly at 350 degrees when drawing the straight line. It is easier to think of it as a 10-degree tilt and set off 10 degrees, because that method works from whichever side of the plot you start.