Expanded Vertical Coordinate System Support

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Overview

Site Scan for ArcGIS continues to streamline your project workflows with a major enhancement: you now have the flexibility to align your drone mapping projects with regional standards and precise spatial references, thanks to expanded support for all vertical coordinate systems available in the Esri projection engine.

This new capability means you can confidently deliver consistent, high-quality results in the same spatial reference as your other project data. This eliminates the need for manual data transformations before or after processing your data in Site Scan. Vertically accurate outputs are ready for immediate use, saving you time and reducing the risk of creating potentially misleading results.

Whether you’re working in AEC, utilities, or government, vertical accuracy is critical. By aligning your processed data's spatial reference with regional standards, you can ensure that project deliverables meet the requirements of your stakeholders and regulatory bodies.

This enhancement is part of our ongoing commitment to help you maximize the value of your imagery investments and deliver dependable results.

Setting a vertical coordinate system

GCP sets

You may already have one or more GCP sets uploaded to Site Scan that are in a spatial reference using either EGM96 Geoid, WGS84 Ellipsoid, or NAVD 88 as the vertical datum. You may continue to use your GCP sets in this spatial reference, or you can switch to a new vertical coordinate system.

If your GCPs were surveyed in a specific regional vertical coordinate system, you can now create a new GCP set and specify that vertical coordinate system, or modify the vertical coordinate system of an existing GCP set, to match the vertical coordinate system of the GCP coordinates.

Note: Before changing the coordinate system of your GCP set, ensure that the GCP elevation values are in the vertical coordinate system that you want to switch to. If you have a CSV of original GCP coordinates, you can also create a new GCP set and choose the appropriate horizontal and vertical coordinate systems, but this will require retagging GCPs for existing missions.

Note: Custom coordinate systems can only use EGM96 Geoid or WGS84 Ellipsoid (depending on the chosen unit).

Whether you are editing an existing set or creating a new one, the steps are similar:

1. If creating a new GCP set, browse to the GCPs menu of your project and click Upload GCP Set. (If editing an existing GCP set, browse to the GCP set that you want to edit, click the ellipses icon to expand options, then click Edit.)
2. If creating a new GCP set, upload your CSV file.
3. If not already selected, choose Known Coordinate System. 
4. Expand the Vertical Coordinate System dropdown and choose your desired coordinate system.
5. Click Save.
6. If editing the project default GCP set, you will be prompted to also modify the project coordinate system so they match.

Projects

Follow these steps to switch the vertical coordinate system on your project.

1. Open the project and click on Settings.
2. Under Project Details, review your project's current horizontal and vertical coordinate system.
3. Click Edit in the Project Details pane. A menu will appear with a map focused on the project location and options for the horizontal and vertical coordinate system.
4. Expand the Vertical Coordinate System dropdown and choose your desired coordinate system.
5. Click Save.

You can now select from a larger list of vertical coordinate system for your project and GCP set.

That's it! Missions processed after this change will generate data products with the vertical coordinate system that you selected.

Note: An exception is the mesh data product. The mesh is always transformed to WGS84 for horizontal and EGM96 Geoid vertical.

Tips, limitations, and next steps

You might notice that some coordinate systems are excluded from the list, and this is by design. Here are some limitations that you should keep in mind when working with coordinate systems in Site Scan:

• You can only pick a project horizontal and vertical coordinate system whose extent encompasses the project location. If the coordinate system you want to use is not available in the coordinate system dropdown, verify the project location is correct and change it if needed.
• You can only pick a vertical coordinate system whose unit matches the horizontal coordinate system. The exception is geographic coordinate systems, which use a unit of degrees, as they can be paired with a vertical coordinate system in any unit.
• Be mindful of warnings and read prompts carefully. If you are using an invalid horizontal/vertical coordinate system combination, you will see new warnings on the processing menu to prompt you to change your GCP set or project coordinate system to a valid combination. Proceeding with invalid combinations may result in processing failure.
• You can no longer modify individual coordinates of a GCP set. If your GCP coordinates are outdated, create a new GCP set by following the instructions above.

As always, we are open to feedback that you have about this feature. Please share your ideas and questions on the Esri Community so that we can continue improving how coordinate systems are handled in Site Scan.