Do you "reposition the central meridian"? If so, how?

[Anonymous User]

Hi all -

I'm teaching an intro-level "GeoTechniques" class this semester. It's my first term teaching. I'm using the reading Making a Meaningful Map among others. The authors refer to a process where you are "repositioning the central meridian... to the center of the mapped area" (p.2). It does make sense to me that this could be done, but having always mapped with State Plane I've never had the need to do it.

Do you do this? If so, how?! This embarks on creating a custom projection, no?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments on this.

Cheers,

Joanna

[Randall_ERaymond]

I believe they are actually just saying "Zoom your Map to the area of interest" and nothing more complicated! As an example if you were working with data for say the City of Detroit. You would want to zoom your map, and the map products your produce, to reasonably close area around Detroit to best illustrate what you are trying to show.