Supported projections

ArcPad supports the following projections and national grids:

• Geodetic or geographic coordinates (latitude-longitude)
• Albers Equal Area Conic
• Cassini
• Cylindrical Equal Area
• Double Stereographic
• Everest Modified 1969 RSO Malaya Meters
• Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Center
• Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Natural Origin
• Hotine Oblique Mercator Two Point Center
• Hotine Oblique Mercator Two Point Natural Origin
• Kertau Singapore Grid
• Kertau RSO Malaya Chains
• Kertau RSO Malaya Meters
• Krovak (S-JTSK)
• Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area
• Lambert Conformal Conic
• Malaysian RSO
• Mount Dillon Tobago Grid
• New Zealand Map Grid
• Palestine 1923 Israel CS Grid
• Palestine 1923 Palestine Grid
• Qatar 1948 Qatar Grid
• Rectified Skew Orthometric Center
• Rectified Skew Orthometric Natural Origin
• Stereographic
• Timbalai 1948 RSO Borneo Chains
• Timbalai 1948 RSO Borneo Feet
• Timbalai 1948 RSO Borneo Meters
• Transverse Mercator (or Gauss-Krüger)
• Trinidad 1903 Trinidad Grid
• Trinidad 1903 Trinidad Grid Feet Clarke

The above projections cover all UTM projections, for example, AMG, MGA, and many national grids.

State Plane is covered by the Transverse Mercator, Lambert Conformal Conic, and Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Natural Origin projections.

The Michigan GeoRef projection uses the Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Center projection.

The Hungarian National Projection uses the Hotine Oblique Mercator Azimuth Center projection.

ArcPad supports the display of coordinates on the screen or incoming GPS coordinates in the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS). MGRS coordinates can also be used to find a location with the Find tool.

ArcPad supports on-the-fly projection and datum conversion from the (geographic) GPS input datum to the projection and datum of the current map.

Several hundred sample projection files (.prj) are installed with ArcPad on your PC in the Coordinate Systems folder, located in your ArcPad installation folder. You can also use other existing projection files or create your own projection files with the following criteria:

• The PROJECTION component of the .prj file is one of the supported projections listed above.
• The DATUM component of the .prj file is one of the datums defined, either in the ArcPad internal datum tables or in Transforms.dbf.

Developers can also add support for additional projections and datum transformations by building custom projection and datum transformation extensions using ArcPad Studio.

You can view the list of supported projections by running the Export Projection Information utility. The Export Projection Information Utility creates a number of files in the ArcPad System folder, including the Export_Projections.txt file. This file lists all the ArcGIS Projection Engine projections, and notes whether or not each projection is supported by ArcPad. The projection parameters are also listed, as illustrated by the following extract of the Export_Projections.txt file for the Transverse Mercator projection:

43006,Transverse_Mercator

*** Supported ***

100001,False_Easting,0

100002,False_Northing,1

100010,Central_Meridian,2

100003,Scale_Factor,5

100021,Latitude_Of_Origin,6

You should not edit the Export_Projections.txt file, as it is not used by ArcPad.

Checking if projection information is understood by ArcPad

You can check if ArcPad has understood, or correctly interpreted, the projection information in the projection file (.prj) or projection strings sent by ArcIMS servers or extensions to ArcPad. Open the Map Properties dialog box and tap the Projection tab. All the names and values listed on the Projection tab should be identical to the names and values listed in the projection file (.prj). If they are not the most probable cause is that there is an error in the projection file or ArcPad does not support the projection.