Transformation Parameters Calculator

Leica's SKI Pro will do it for an arm and a leg price.

I have used a program by Chuck Ghilani of Penn State Wilkes Barre.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/cdg3/free.htm

download and install the adjust 6.0.2 program, then go to programs...coordinate computations. Dr Ghilani has a couple of excellent texts out...Adjustment Computations and Elementary Surveying.

TRANSFORM by PrimaCode

Prof. Guilani's stuff is for educational use only. Use it for profit/professional applications and you owe him some money.

Transform is a 2D calculator for plane surveying applications.

Leica's SKI Pro is a 3D calculator used for geodetic datum shifts. However, I think it only does Bursa-Wolfe 7-parameter solutions; not Molodenski 7-parameter solutions which include classical datum origins. Null the third dimension and it should do the same as a 2D solution, including variance-covariance geometric dilution of precision error propagation.

Apples and oranges, folks.

I use my own to do the same but it only works in MS-DOS because I'm too cheap to upgrade to a current Fortran compiler.

Cliff: I have written my own as well, but it is nice to have something to compare it against (Adjust from Ghilani). His text Adjustment Computations Spatial Data Analysis (Fifth edition) has a chapter 18: Coordinate Transformations which explains everything quite well. ISBN 978-0-470-46491-5. I highly recommend it for anyone who does adjustments.

To go off on a tangent a bit...I recently was giving some advice to the son of a friend, I have known him since he was born. He wants to go to college for engineering (he is quite intelligent), and asked for my advice (he will be a senior in high school). I told him one of the best things he can learn this year in high school is how to write computer programs. I believe that is one of the main reasons I have been successful is my ability to write programs to do whatever I need. Of course I buy commercial packages, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. But the ability to quickly write a routine to do something has been really beneficial. I took fortran in 1977 (punched cards) in my freshman year in college, of course things have changed since then, but it was a topic that, at least when I was in school, was not emphasized as being so important.

John,
I agree about the ability to program computers; it's a shame that such pursuits do not seem to be emphasized in most engineering programs any more. Seems like it faded when Windows became popularized. (That's actually when I gave up writing software for resale.)

If Visual Basic is still around, that's probably the best tool to learn. Visual C and its descendants are too much of a low-level language family to easily pick up.

I still use VB. I have tried to transition to VB.net, but cannot convince myself that it worth the effort (a lot of others feel the same way!). I started way back with QB, and those old programs are pretty easy to upgrade to VB (the code part, anyway).

>Leica's SKI Pro is a 3D calculator used for geodetic datum shifts. However, I think it only does Bursa-Wolfe 7-parameter solutions; not Molodenski 7-parameter solutions which include classical datum origins. Null the third dimension and it should do the same as a 2D solution, including variance-covariance geometric dilution of precision error propagation.
>
> Apples and oranges, folks.
>
> I use my own to do the same but it only works in MS-DOS because I'm too cheap to upgrade to a current Fortran compiler.

The optional transformations module for Leica's LGO will use either Bursa-Wolfe 7-parameter solutions or Molodenski 7-parameter solutions, the user picks the one they want to use.

SHG

I do my own stuff too but I still have the feeling of discontentment working inside me. So I need some sort of verification.

I usually solve for my own 7 transformation parameter values as the usual case in Philippine surveying. What I need now is a checking facility for my work - a calculator used to determine the 7 transformation parameter values and not the RTS thing.

Thank you so much for sharing.

Regards.

Mr Mugnier:

For what it's worth, I have little interest in coding matrix inversions and the like. I like Matlab (commercial and expensive) and Scilab (open source and free).

I find that as educational tools they are more suited to the outcomes I intend. Programming is rather tedious; the creation of scripts much more straightforward.

In addition, there are a lot of good scripts available for download. See for example: http://kom.aau.dk/~borre/life-l99/

I have tried Mathematica but never really like it. Meyer at UCONN has some interesting code for it.

Cheers,

DMM