Merging Data with different spatial references.

[Shihab_Albusaidi]

Hi Community! 

I'm in a dilemma at work.

long story short, I was hired as a fresh graduate in as a one person department to oversee the establishment and implementation of GIS in the institution. Our data originally was in CAD format and vary from plots containing investors data and infrastructure networks (Basically a masterplan) which are located in blocks across the entire country which means that our assets fall in different zones in terms of coordinate systems.

That is why our consultant made 13 different Enterprise SDE GDBs, which caused a lot of problems managing the entire thing instead of a single unified GDB. 

They keep arguing that it is not possible to upload and merge all CAD drawings and data without causing problems in the positional accuracy of the data.

I need your help strengthening our argument or better solutions to finally come out with an accurate single GDB to rely on in our future work.

Thank you in advance and sorry for the long post.

kind regards,,,

[wizgis]

@Shihab_Albusaidi 

Greetings,

I assume that we are talking about having a single Geodatabase and not having a single Feature Class that can contain all the data.

With that being said, of course you can have a single Geodatabase that contains feature classes of different projection/spatial reference as Geodatabase is nothing but an empty container further, if more organization is needed then in that case you can consider creating feature datasets and assign projection to it, doing this ensures that only feature classes that have same projection as feature dataset gets added to it. 

Links for reference : https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/geodatabases/overview/fundamentals-of-the-geodata... 

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/feature-datasets/feature-datasets-in-arcgis-pro.h...

Hope this helps.

[Shihab_Albusaidi]

@wizgis 

Hi there,

Yes I am talking about a single GDB not a single feature class.

We already have a GDB schema that has multiple Datasets, but our main concern is that the plots are linked with contracts so we need them all to have accurate location. Will converting the coordinates affect the positional accuracy of the plots themselves? We are planning on depending on GIS entirely in granting plots and marking stakes on the ground.

Thank you for your response and I hope I don't annoy you with my questions :).

[Shihab_Albusaidi]

@wizgis 

I feel like I am explaining the issue poorly.

Here's a clearer image of what we intend to do (attached).

[wizgis · Accepted solution]

@Shihab_Albusaidi 

Thank you for sharing the illustration. After going through this I can suggest you create different feature datasets inside the Geodatabase with different projections as a single feature dataset can contain only one projection and only those feature classes which have same projection as feature dataset can get imported in them. 

Following illustration might help : 

In this way you won't have to change projection of any feature class and still have all of them in a single GDB. 

Note: A GDB is a container and doesn't really have a spatial reference of its own whereas a feature dataset has a spatial reference of its own. 

Following doc also might help : https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/feature-datasets/feature-datasets-in-arcgis-pro.h...