topic Re: Difficulty with changing projection in ArcGIS Desktop Installation Support Questions

Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 05:01:30 GMT

Can someone please help with this very odd projection related problem I'm having?

I've received an Excel file with data, the coordinates are available in the attached sheet.

The coordinates are most likely in the 'WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_14N' coordinate system. I've tried to verify this by iterating through all the 130 UTM projections and selecting the one that plotted a control point in the place I expected it to be.

I've created points from all the coordinates in the attached sheet and spent all day trying to project these points into the regular 'GCS_WGS_1984' system.

I cant even get these plotted points to line up with polygons that are in the same UTM projection!

The Project tool is failing with a '9999999' error code. The original projection is defined, so that's not the cause

I've tried change the projection for a single point's coordinates as done here: Coordinate transformation in arcpy

In the past, I've never had a problem changing the spatial reference from 'WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_14N' to 'GCS_WGS_1984' using the Project tool.

How can I plot the attached points in ArcMap and project to 'GCS_WGS_1984'?

The challenge is that it took a month to request the data and these coordinates are all I have to work with.

I'd really appreciate if someone can help figure this out.

Thank you

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 05:15:28 GMT

hmmm there are about 10,000,000 meters from the equator to the Pole

13,865,340. can't be right if these values are in meters and you think you have a utm projection

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 05:43:12 GMT

Here is an example:

"X LCIM": 277150.548

"Y LCIM": 3296160.057

Which translates into 29.775714, -95.305089.

The above is given for 721 Rouse St, Houston, TX.

Odd, right?

Does their notation of "LCIM" next to the coordinates ring a bell at all? I could't find that abbreviation anywhere.

Would it be possible to narrow down to the projection they're using if it's not UTM.

Should I focus on Foot based systems?

Thank you

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:27:45 GMT

Lambert conformal? I couldn't find one either... so,

Melita Kennedy anything projection-wisek in that area that would have those numbers?

Your best hope is Melita

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

NeilAyres — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 08:12:07 GMT

X-COORD	Y-COORD
3150059.572	13865340.77

Dan is right. Are you sure that these numbers are not feet instead of metres?

Where do you expect these coordinates to sit?

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:11:40 GMT

Hi Neil, the associated address is 8320 Sunbury St, Houston Texas.

So the coordinates are: -95.273127, 29.82195.

Does that help?

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

DanPatterson_Retired — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:17:20 GMT

Albers? Melita listed 3 in this thread

Projected Coordinate System for entire Texas (for area calculation using sqmi)

and to check, you have ruled out that horrid Web Mercator one that the webbie apps all use?

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:39:35 GMT

Thank you Dan! Will check and let you know.

Since I don't fully understand how ArcMap deals with showing features that are in different systems at once,

Is it safe to assume that once a set of XY coordinates are plotted under different selected projections, I could correctly select the projection that put the test point in the right place on the world basemap in arcpy?

I'm using Arcpy to iterate over the 5000 projection systems, plotting the XY points. I've only done this for the 130 UTM systems last time. Then I exported all the points to a KMZ file and Google Earth showed one of the results in the right place.

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

NeilAyres — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:13:16 GMT

"I'm using Arcpy to iterate over the 5000 projection systems, plotting the XY points."

Pardon!!, that's brave. If you find one that fits, go for it!

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

V_StuartFoote — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:30:38 GMT

Those are in Texas State Plane - South Central, in US Feet (FIPS 4204), look up the projection details if you actually need to convert from NAD83.

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:56:16 GMT

Wow, how did you figure that out??

I didn't have that projection available, so I downloaded it here:

NAD 1983 StatePlane Texas South Central FIPS 4204 Feet: ESRI Projection -- Spatial Reference

Thank you!

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

V_StuartFoote — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:22:39 GMT

Lat,Long and street address you gave. ArcMap data frame set to Texas State Plane South Central (but possibly is the HARN flavor) with world street map base map. Lat,Long to street address. Cursor position to X,Y tupple matching the data. Then just load the table to geodatabase, and create an x,y display of the table data.

You are on ArcGIS, so would be very surprised if you did not have the State Plane coordinate systems available in the listing for Projected coordinate systems to assign to a data frame.

And, with a little fiddling (for practice) exactly the same flow and availability of State Plane projections and table load to geodatabase and display of x,y data using ArcGIS Pro.

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:31:00 GMT

Got it.

Did you recognize that you needed to set the Texas State Plane South Central data frame after seeing the coordinates?

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

V_StuartFoote — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:52:47 GMT

Sure! But, I kind of cheated since most "administrative" GIS is done in State Plane, and Houston is in the same SPCS 83 zone as San Antonio so I work data sets cast in it often. Though personally for most of my mapping I prefer UTM.

=-ref-=

State Plane Coordinate System - Wikipedia

State Plane Coordinate System—Help | ArcGIS Desktop

Re: Difficulty with changing projection

VeraKhazanova — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 17:36:32 GMT

Awesome, thank you