How to convert latitude/longitude Oracle database table to a State Plane coordinate system shapefile?

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12-05-2016 06:42 AM
ShannonGrumbly
New Contributor II

I have a table of almost 700,000 records that I would like to plot as points. There is an X field and Y field stored as lat/long (e.g. 40.04746, -75.233316). However, all of my other data is in NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet. I cannot get the table to plot correctly over my existing data. In fact, it plots somewhere in Ohio.

So far I have tried:

  • The 'Add XY Data' tool, using the Data Frame's State Plane coordinate system and inputing the X field for X and Y field for Y.
  • Importing the table into Arc and right-clicking 'Display XY Data', exporting as a shapefile, and using 'Define Projection' as NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet. The tool was successful but did not change the coordinates or add any new fields for re-mapping.
  • Importing the table into Arc and right-clicking 'Display XY Data', exporting as a shapefile, and using 'Project' to change the output coordinate system to NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet. This tool runs unsuccessfully, giving the error 'ERROR 999999: Error executing function: invalid extent for output coordinate system. Failed to execute (Project)'.

I'm not sure what else to try at this point, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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12 Replies
JayantaPoddar
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Since your coordinates' units are in Degree Decimal, Do Not use NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet as the (defined) coordinate system. Instead, try using GCS_NAD_1983.

Then you could use PROJECT tool to reproject the coordinate system from GCS_NAD_1983 to NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet.



Think Location
BillChappell
Occasional Contributor II

Open a new MXD, Under View, Data Frame Properties put in 3702, now add data, the X,Y's, in the X,Y event dialog, the example you showed is (40.04746, -75.233316) is really Y, X, Lat is Y, Longitude is X,  where it says set coordinate system, tell it what it is, (4326 -- wgs 84) not state plane. Once the data comes in you can export it out as a shapefile, with the option of using the dataframe (Stateplane S) or the layers (WGS84). pick dataframe and your shapefile will be in the right projection.

The key is defining the data for what it is not what you want it to be. If it starts off in the wrong place it will end up in the wrong place.

ShannonGrumbly
New Contributor II

Thank you all for your input!! You are life savers!

The final solution was: open new MXD, set the Data Frame to WGS 1984, add the table, [export as geodatabase table if there is no OID], use the Field Calculator to convert string fields to float, Display XY Data using new float fields, and Project as NAD 1983 State Plane Pennsylvania South FIPS 3702 Feet.