Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Associating a Coordinate System with a Dataset

For those of you using a GPS receiver with GTViewer or Pocket GTViewer, you have probably had to set the Coordinate System for your data under the GPS receiver setup. This is not a difficult task; however, if you do not have it set correctly, the GPS coordinate will probably be off in space somewhere instead of showing where you actually are on your maps. Once set, the coordinate system setting will remain until it is changed again.

It has always been possible to associate a coordinate system with a dataset by following a few simple steps. Once this is done, the coordinate system will always be correctly set when the dataset is opened and users never have to worry about configuring the coordinate system. Here are the steps to follow:

1) You must first set the coordinate system to the desired setting in the regular manor. This configuration can be done in GTViewer or Pocket GTViewer. Once done, you will be able to find a file called GpsInfo.ini in the product path. For GTViewer, this will be: c:\Program Files\Graphic Technologies Inc\gtviewer and for Pocket GTViewer it will be \Program Files\Graphic Technologies Inc\PGTViewer on the device.

2) Take the GpsInfo.ini file and copy it to the directory containing your .GTM file for the dataset.

3) Add the following entry to the dataset’s .GTM file in the [General Info] section:

GPSInfoFile=gpsInfo.ini

4) The next time you open the .GTM file, the coordinate system will automatically be set. If you want your Extract files to include this additional information, you will have to recreate the .GTX files from this modified .GTM file.

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