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Anyone using units other than DD.MMSSsssss?

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Software, CAD & Mapping

Last Post by Randy Rain 11 years ago

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john-hamilton

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Since I do a lot of my own computations in software that I developed, I found it much easier to use grads for angular units. For those who don't know, 400g=360å¡. So, east is 100g, south is 200g, etc. Makes it much easier to deal with in computations, everything is decimal. Of course, I don't produce plats or do any boundary work. My product is usually coordinates or some derivation of coordinates, like station and offsets in a deformation survey. I still use DMS for geodetic coordinates (latitude, longitude).

Just curious if anyone else uses grads. Of course an instrument can be set to work in any units, as can CAD software.

Posted : July 8, 2015 9:32 am

christ-lambrecht

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Grads here in Belgium but only for surveying and sometimes road design, but we talk about gons not grads.
I guess most surveyors in the North European countries use them, first used by the French artillery.

easy typing compared to the other angle formats.

Chr.

Posted : July 8, 2015 2:27 pm

Kris Morgan

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I use a full smoot circle (17018 parts per full circle). East and West have that stinky .5 in the angular unit, but South and North are great. 🙂

Posted : July 8, 2015 2:33 pm

holy-cow

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Speaking of full circles we should keep in mind that the month of July will have a Blue Moon on the 31st. If you think the crazies are extra crazy on a normal Full Moon just wait until the Blue Moon.

Posted : July 8, 2015 2:44 pm

cptdent

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and the cow jumped over the Moon............................

Posted : July 8, 2015 8:25 pm

jhframe

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John Hamilton, post: 326308, member: 640 wrote: Of course an instrument can be set to work in any units

Tell that to my T2!

Posted : July 8, 2015 9:13 pm

thebionicman

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I worked in mils and meters for my first six years surveying. 1 miles equals 1 meter at 1000 meters. It makes fire direction simple...

Posted : July 9, 2015 7:58 am

spledeus

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I still enjoy radians, but there are so few practical applications.

The point cloud software typically uses decimal degrees.

Posted : July 9, 2015 9:36 am

johnymal

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John here in Greece we work only with grads the computations is much easier than DMS.

Posted : July 9, 2015 10:33 am

Randy Rain

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spledeus, post: 326479, member: 3579 wrote: I still enjoy radians, but there are so few practical applications.

The point cloud software typically uses decimal degrees.

Calculating Arc Length, the only reason for radian measurement of angles that I know of (Delta angle in radians * Radius = Arc Length).

Posted : July 14, 2015 4:32 pm