The purpose of today’s project is show how to handle the scenario where you have to apply a datum transformation to your data while keeping the same projection. This project addresses some confusion that might exist about the difference between datum and projection. We take a concrete example of a point in degrees using the ED50 datum and we apply a datum transformation so that it is in degrees using the WGS84 datum. Please, read carefully the comments to better grasp some key concepts.

Having to project a layer from geodetic (decimal degrees) to State Plane is a common task in GIS. One of the challenges is to know what State Plane zone a layer belongs to. This project is basically a little utility for State Plane projection needs. With the help of the State Plane zones layer provided, any layer in geodetic can be projected automatically to State Plane without having to do research to know the specific zone a layer belongs to. The opposite task (that comes even more frequently) of going from State Plane to Geodetic is unfortunately impossible to accomplish the same automatic way.

A common situation with dealing with geographic data from different sources is to have to “match” data in decimal degrees (Geodetic) with data in the local system of UTM. For example, you may have vector data in decimal degrees and an image in UTM. Projecting vector data is always more straightforward than projecting image data, that is why it is preferable to project the vector data to the image, rather than the opposite. In this project, we show the example of projecting a vector layer in decimal degrees (Geodetic) to UTM to “match” a tiff in that projection.

This sample demonstrates how you can project raster layers in real-time for your .NET GIS application. In the sample it will show you show we switch a small sample image to and from a variety of projections. This sample was developer using the Map Suite Services Edition just to show how these feature are in the core of the framework. Projection can easily be applied to all of products such as the Wpf Desktop Edition, Silverlight Edition, MVC Edition and so on. It is important to note that this implementation is unmanaged and at the moment we do not have a managed version however we are working on it.

This project extends what we learned in Pacific Rim. We show how to apply the Offset projection to Great Circle to have it displaying correctly over the pacific as opposed to Google Map where the same Great Circle is shown broken down.

This project is in response to a Discussion Forum post that has generated plenty of debate on the meaning of measuring area for shapes in decimal degrees.
In this project, you will see how to get area and length measurements according to the projection used from a shape in decimal degrees. For more information on why different measurements can be obtained from the same shapes, please read the Discussion Forum “GetArea on Buffered shape not working as expected”

This project shows how to display the Pacific Rim and Asia if you pan to the west, so that the world “wraps around,” as it does with Google Maps.\\Many of our Map Suite sample applications include an example of the world being displayed using a world ShapeFile. The ShapeFile is in Decimal Degrees and it displays the world according to longitude and latitude value ranges. These ranges are from -180 to 180 for longitude and 90 to -90 for latitude. In our various examples that use this ShapeFile, you see the Western Hemisphere on the left and the Eastern Hemisphere on the right. Now, a common request that we receive is to display the Pacific Rim and Asia if you pan to the west, so that the world “wraps around,” as it does with Google Maps. This can be accomplished in Map Suite 3.x by using a custom projection that offsets all of the points by 360 for the x (longitude) values. (180 + 180 360). …

Following a request from the Discussion Forum on how to handle cases where the shape straddles the 180 degree meridian on a Decimal Degree map, we created this project. The solution is to split the shape into two main parts to be displayed on the two ends of the map.In this case, we use the case of a Polygon but this could easily be adapted for any other shapes such as lines.

Today’s project is more about learning and raising awareness about map projections than about a specific programming technique. By monitoring the Discussion Forum, we have encountered a large number of questions related to projections and distances. Many Map Suite users are unsettled by getting different distances from the same locations on various projections. To try to demystify this a little bit, we show how a regular grid on lat/long points get distorted in various ways depending on the projection applied. By visually seeing the distortion happening, it helps understand why distances can vary so wildly. You will also find some link to study this topic a little further if you wish.

You may be in the situation where you have data in a projection that is in feet. For example, you may have the data for the USA in the standard Lambert projection in feet. Unfortunately, many of the projections offered in the PROJ4 library (the default projection library in Map Suite), handles the different projections in meters. It is the case for USA Contiguous Lambert Conformal Conic projection (ESPG code 102004). It is only available in meters.This project will show you the trick to easily have the projection of your choice being in feet using the original projection in meters.

From a Discussion Forum request, in today’s project we show how to perform routing in one projection and display the result in another. You may be in the situation where you have your routable street data in State Plane meters and you have your base map in Geodetic (decimal degrees). This project shows you how to handle this case.

In the Projection section of the “How Do I” sample apps, there is a sample app that shows how to project on the fly a layer in one projection to another. While this is useful, you may be in the need to actually create a new layer in the desired projection. This project shows how to use the API SaveToProjection of ShapeFileFeatureLayer. In this project we use the example where you need your data in a regional projection saved to WGS84 (decimal degrees) to match other data such as GPS readings or the WorldMapKit.

The purpose of this sample is to address a projection issue that you may encounter when converting your data from your local projection to Google Map. It has been reported by Map Suite users that in some cases reprojecting their data to Google Map or other base maps using Spherical Mercator (Bing Map, Open Street Map etc) is inaccurate with the data being shifted a few hundreds of meters. This problem has been identified as being caused by an unnecessary grid shift when going from ellipsoid datum to spherical datum. Among other projections, the British National Grid (BNG) and the German Gauss-Kruger system have that problem when going to Spherical Mercator.
This sample uses the example of BNG to demonstrate the problem and how to fix it. The Map Suite development team will offer a permanent solution to this projection issue but in the meantime, as a rule of thumb, if your data shows some inaccuracies when going to Spherical Mercator, use the method you find this sample. This is a Desktop app but the concept shown applies to all editions of Map Suite.

From a request in the Discussion Forum, we decided to post a project today related to street intersection. In this project, we show how to get the intersection point of two streets. Basically, we get all the street features according to the street name and based on the shapes from those features, we do use some geometric function to determine what the intersection point of those two streets is. Keep in mind that the code provided in this sample app might not be the fastest or more optimized but it basically shows the algorithm for that purpose. This algorithm will be used to complement the Map Suite Geocoder product for Intersection geocoding.

In the “How Do I” sample apps, in the section “Projection”, you can find the sample “Use RotationProjection for a feature layer”. It allows to basically rotating the map to any angle. You can see how useful this can be by having the map rotated according to a vehicle direction, for example. Now, what is missing in this sample are the world coordinates in the status bar at the mouse move event. Today we show how to do that and what technique to use.

The purpose of this project is to complete the section “Screen & World Coordinates” of the “How Do I?” sample apps. You will learn how to display world coordinates at the mouse event. Notice that the Layer is in Mercator projection and we use a projection conversion to display Longitude and Latitude in addition to the world coordinates values in meters from the Mercator projection.
Also, we are reusing the DecimalDegrees static class we used in a previous project for formatting decimal degrees.