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MeasureAction:  geodesic area?

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07-19-2010 11:43 AM
MarkCederholm
Frequent Contributor
I've noticed that in the online MeasureAction sample, the perimeter is correct but the area is off compared to a similar measurement in a projected coordinate system.  Is a cartesian or geodesic calculation used for the area?  I've adapted the geodesic area code from GRASS and the results compare favorably to the projected results.
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dotMorten_esri
Esri Notable Contributor
Geodesic calculation is only used when using a map with geographic coordinates. For anything else, euclidean calculations are used, so "beware of projection distortion".
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MarkCederholm
Frequent Contributor
By "online" sample I mean the one published by ESRI at the API for Silverlight resource center.  It uses the Streetmap_2D service, which is in geographic coordinates.  I was assuming knowledge of this in my original post.  To verify the measurements, I brought the same service into ArcMap and projected it to UTM (WGS 84) for the area I was testing.  In the sample, the MeasureAction's map units are set to DD, and the perimeter calculation is correct, so obviously the geodesic distance algorithm is used in that case.  It is the area calculation that I am bringing into question.
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