Convert contours feet to meters

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12-12-2016 08:20 AM
StewartGalloway
New Contributor III

How do I convert contours that are in State Plane to meters?

Thanks.

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10 Replies
AdamZiegler1
Esri Contributor

Hi Stewart,

I would suggest reprojecting the data to the same state plane projuection with a linear unit of meters.

Project—Help | ArcGIS Desktop 

-Adam Z

StewartGalloway
New Contributor III

Hi Adam,

Where do I set the linear units in the Environment Settings?  "Z Values"?

Thanks.

Stew

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Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

The Project GP tool examines the input coordinate system, in this case Stateplane, and creates a copy of the feature class reprojected into UTM.  UTM's units of measure is meters and will be applied to the output feature class.  You may have to apply a Geographic Transformation in the Project GP tool as well to correct for some error.  Environment setting can be applied if you wish but I'd recommend trying the Project tool first.

AdamZiegler1
Esri Contributor

Stew - I may have answered too quickly. Robert has a good point. Are you looking for the data to have the values or are you simply looking to have them as attributes? The reprojecting of data will give you actual values for your stored geometries. If you are looking to affect labels then Robert's suggestion below is what you're looking for.

To reproject/convert actual z values on true z-aware data there will be an option in the reproject tool to handle the Vertical values.

-Adam Z

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Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

If it's a vector feature class, use the Project geoprocessing tool to reproject it from Stateplane to UTM.  Or add a new attribute field (i.e. CONTOUR_MT) and calculate the field (i.e. CONTOUR_FT * 0.3048)


Hope this helps!

StewartGalloway
New Contributor III

I used Data Management Tools \ Projections \ Project \

I selected WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_18N

Then opened the Environment Settings \ Z Values and entered Meters for Z resolution.

Is that the correct workflow?

Robert_LeClair
Esri Notable Contributor

Seems reasonable to me.  UTM horizontal units of measure are generally Meters and the Environment Settings for Z-values set to meters should be fine as well.

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DanPatterson_Retired
MVP Emeritus

Just to confirm... you will still have strange decimal numbers which represent the conversion from meters to feet.  I hope you aren't looking for the data to be reinterpolated so that your contours are in integers, albeit in feet, and not in the result of the conversion. That would require the original data used to produce the contours and the identical interpolation process.  Changes to the labels would save you the conversion of the files, only to arrive at a slightly different incarnation of the problem

StewartGalloway
New Contributor III

I think that the odd numbers are OK in this case since the reason I need this in meters is because I am creating slope data.  Therefore I don't need to display the contours with proper labels.

btw how would I reinterpolate the contours to actually have metric contours with proper labels (30 instead of 30.48).  The original data is 2 foot contours.

thanks for your help.

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