Every project seems to have different coordinate requirements. Client wants State Plane, drone outputs WGS84, control is on a local assumed system. Spending too much time on transformations.
What's your workflow for keeping coordinate systems straight? Any tools that make this less painful?
Sign in to join the discussion
Sign inThe real answer is to push back on clients when they give you weird requirements. If they want State Plane, they should provide control in State Plane. Don't let coordinate gymnastics become your problem.
Document everything upfront. Before flying, confirm: what datum, what projection, what epoch, what units. Make a project sheet.
For transformations, I use QGIS with the proj library. Free and handles almost any conversion. Civil3D's coordinate tools are decent too.
DroneDeploy has gotten better at this. You can set your output coordinate system in the project settings now. Still not perfect but saves a step.
For local assumed systems though, you're stuck doing manual transformations. No way around it.