International Feet

Switching from US to international feet

Welcome to the 0.3048 club.

You actually switched to the foot.

on December 31, 2022. After that date, the “U.S. survey foot” will be superseded by the “foot” (formerly known as the “international foot”)

For issues with feet, a podiatrist or chiropodist is recommended.  

If we changed the name of the unit to "Mendenhall Foot" perhaps people would have less trouble letting go of it.  

Make sure if you have to do this and coordinates are published on something like state plane or utm. You have meta data note. Here its a 25 ft shift.  Roughly.  Even NGS sais to stick with the way it was designed to be . I think even they understand numbers that look alike in northing and easting  could be confusing lol.   .3048 EXACT.  Vs 1200/3937.  

You actually switched to the foot.

on December 31, 2022. After that date, the “U.S. survey foot” will be superseded by the “foot” (formerly known as the “international foot”)

Since we went to a foot, why didnt we just go to meters. I know why carpenters dont, but all our software and equipment is in meters and is converted to feet. So...

If this is a project in NAD 83 (2011) and it's in a state that is legislatively defined by the U.S. Survey Foot then it should still be in USSF.  The change only applies to SPCs in the new datum when that's released in 2025.  If they still insist PLEASE make sure that's noted in the metadata.

Since we went to a foot, why didnt we just go to meters

It was tried in the 90s. 

There is talk that the state is legislatively defined as US survey feet for NAD83. I'd like to see that statute, from my reading of it, the statute is silent on the subject, not defining it as US feet or international feet. 

I haven't researched other states, but wonder if they're similar. 

And PLEASE isn't enough, you'll have to say PRETTY PLEASE.

@mightymoe Here's one from Michigan if you're interested.

@lurker 

That one is plainly stated. International Feet in Michigan. 

@norm 

Yep, the great meter conversion fiasco. I was a big advocate of it, changed my mind by the time it was finally pulled. Learned what the term FUBAR really means firsthand. 

@mightymoe Here is some info from Colorado.

(1) The plane coordinate values for a point on the earth's surface, used to express the geographic position or location of such point in the appropriate zone of this system, shall consist of two distances expressed in United States survey feet and decimals of a foot when using the Colorado coordinate system of 1927. One of these distances, to be known as the x-coordinate, shall give the position in an east-west direction; the other, to be known as the y-coordinate, shall give the position in a north-south direction. These coordinates shall be made to depend upon and conform to plane rectangular coordinate values for the monumented points of the North American horizontal geodetic control network as published by the national ocean survey/national geodetic survey (formerly the United States coast and geodetic survey), or its successors, and the plane coordinates of which have been computed on the systems defined in this article. Any such station may be used for establishing a survey connection to either Colorado coordinate system.

(2) For the purposes of converting coordinates of the Colorado coordinate system of 1983 from meters to feet, the U.S. Survey Foot shall be used. The conversion factor is: One meter equals 3937/1200 feet.

@mightymoe I remember mid to late 90’s Laying out a road in Colorado. Our requirement was to stake and mark stakes in meters.  The earth work contractors squashed that very quickly.  So they tried the whole just mark the cut fills stationing in feet but everything else all our files meters. That didn’t last long either lol . I wore out my hp 32 converting everything on every shot. 3.2808333333333 just implanted in my brain to this day. I was allergic to .3048 exact. As I have always used us ft accept a few cases and meters.