Geodetic Conversion

Owned by Erlend Kvinnesland
Last updated: Dec 09, 2013
2 min read

Introduction

In Geocap it is the responsibility of the user to secure that data have the correct Datum and Coordinate system, also called a Projection. Datasets with the same geographical location but with different coordinate system will not be displayed in the same graphical window. Thus, you will need to convert one of the datasets to the other coordinate system.



In this section:

GEOTRANS

Geocap uses GEOTRANS for geodetic conversion of coordinates. The following statement applies: The product was developed using GEOTRANS, a product of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and U.S. Army Engineering Research and Development Center.

Through GEOTRANS, Geocap can convert datasets between more than 200 Datums, and 32 different projections and coordinate systems. See the full list in the Appendix.

Converting datasets

The command menu is the same for all conversions, however there has been made four instances of it with pre-defined settings, for your convenience:

  • Convert to Geodetic (lat/lon)
  • Convert to Mercator
  • Convert to UTM
  • Convert to other

You will find these commands in Shared Commands under Operations. You can add to this list by creating a new shared command with specific coordinate system settings. This is useful when working in a specific projection and a specific conversion is done frequently.

You can convert multiple datasets by running the command on a folder.


Example of UTM conversion

Pay special notice to the Result section of the menu:

  • Copy in input folder - Will create a new dataset in the same folder with the original dataset.
  • Replace input - Will override the original dataset with the new one.
  • Specify - Lets you type in a different name for the new dataset and decide which folder to store it in.

Note that Geocap will ask you to specify the coordinate system for the original dataset if it does not contain any geodetic properties.