Bangkok, Thailand

File Transform Coordinates

All of the basic functionality for a single point conversion are available in Transform Coordinates. The File Transform Coordinates perform a conversion and transformation the tabular numeric coordinates from the Comma-separated values (CSV) file. The tabular data must be uniformly organized into columns as the same coordinate system.

When you run Surveyor Pocket Tools the main window will show File Transform Coordinates as the screenshot below.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-02_20-09-07

Double click the icon to activate the tool and you will see the window as below. The top of the dialog is a file browser for open CSV file. When you want to open the file just click open_folder_yellow-32 button.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-02_20-01-17.png

Below the file browser there are two panels on the left and on the right. The left panel is the input section that consists of source coordinate reference system on the top, the middle are columns configuration for input coordinates and the below is a table view of open CSV file. The columns configuration is a very important, you must make sure which column is for Point Name, Latitude, Longitude if geographic coordinate system is chosen. if projected coordinate system is selected then set the column header to Point Name, Easting and Northing respectively.

introduction_ftc_en

The right panel is a output section of coordinate conversion that consists of target coordinate reference system on the top, the middle are columns settings for output results and the below is a table view that displays all the input coordinates and output coordinates columns combined together. If the projected coordinate system is chosen the output will be computed the grid scale factor and convergence as well.

The middle section between the left and right panels are Circled Right-32 button and Microsoft Excel-32 button that are denoted to the “compute” and “save to excel file” respectively.

Example Data

In this tutorial use example data that bundled with the installation. If you are doubtful where is the file and folder. Please follow the link below.

How to locate and use example data?

Batch File Coordinate Transformation

Use the file name “coordinates-lao 1997-utm 48n.csv” from the example folder. The source coordinate reference system is “Lao National Datum 1997“. The target coordinate reference system is “WGS84 / UTM zone 48N“.

Open the CSV file

Click the open_folder_yellow-32 tool and the small dialog will be displayed, you need to click the “Browse…” button to locate the file.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-04-24

Browse to example folder. When you find the file click “Open” to open the CSV file.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-04-58

The contents of the example file is displayed as screenshot below. Please note there is a header of the file on the first line that assist the tool to identify the column for Point Name, Latitude (Grid Northing) or Longitude (Grid Easting).

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-05-04

Click “OK” then the file will be read and displays in the input table on the left side.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-25-10

The coordinates value will be shown on the output table also and column with column header: “Col5“, “Col6“, “Col7” and “Col8” are still blank waiting the coordinate to be computed. Please note in this moment the coordinate reference system not yet set. The next step selecting the coordinate system.

Working with Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS)

To specify the given coordinate reference system definition you can do easily by the steps that provided by Surveyor Pocket Tools. Please follow the tutorial:

How to select a Coordinate System?

Define Angle Display Formats and Input Geodetic Coordinates

There are many possible display formats for geographic or geodetic coordinates (latitude/longitude). Follow the link below for tutorial how to define angle display settings and input geodetic coordinates.

How to define angle display settings and input geodetic coordinates?

Select the source coordinate system on the left panel, first select “Projected Coordinate System“.  Then select the “Datum” just type the short word, for example, “lao” then the new list that relevant to this word will be displayed and select “Lao National Datum 1997“.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-45-22

Select the target coordinate system as the screenshot below.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-03_20-54-57

Now selection of coordinate systems have been completed.

Identify the coordinate columns

Use the Input section to select the columns that contain the input coordinates to match the columns that expected by the tool.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-04_20-28-41.png

Use the Output section to select the columns that will receive from the calculation.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-04_20-57-46

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-04_08-04-17

Coordinate Transformation

Click the Circled Right-32 button to calculate the coordinate transformation and the results will be shown on the right table. Values will be read from the input columns for each row in the table, converted, and written to the specified output columns.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-04_08-08-46

Notice the column header:  “Col5” and “Col6” was defined as output for WGS84 / UTM zone 48N Grid Northing and Grid Easting respectively. In case of the projected coordinate system was chosen so the tool computed the grid scale factor that displayed on “Col7” and convergence on “Col8” as the screenshot above.

Export to Microsoft Excel File

When the computation was done, You may need to export the results to well-known file format like Microsoft Excel. So you can open this file later by Microsoft Excel, Libre Office or another spreadsheet application that supported this file format. Click the Microsoft Excel-32 button the save file dialog will be displayed, browse to your folder to keep this file. For example, I saved the file “ftc_test.xlsx” to my folder.

Surveyor Pocket Tools_2017-04-04_19-41-14

Open with the Spreadsheet Application

You can open the exported file with Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet application. For example, I will use Libre Office. After open the file, you will see the header text is not perfect. The header text is obscured due to the column space is not enough. It need to adjust some column widths to more wider.

soffice.bin_2017-04-04_19-52-50

Adjust the column width until the headet text is full displayed. The spreadsheet divided into two color schemes: the input coordinates are blue on the left side and the output coordinates are green on the right side.

soffice.bin_2017-04-04_19-51-25

The File Transform Coordinate perform the coordinates conversion or transformation from the CSV file and output the results to display on the table. In addition, can export the output to the spreadsheet file, for example, Microsoft Excel, Libre Office.