Coordinate Formats

Different coordinate formats can be used when adding world coordinates in the Control Points List. The coordinate format depends on whether the coordinate system specified is projected or geodetic. For projected coordinate systems (e.g. UTM Zone 17N), world X and Y coordinates are entered in the units of the coordinate system (e.g. meter, kilometer, feet). For geodetic coordinate systems (e.g. WGS 84), world coordinates are entered as degrees of latitude and longitude. Depending on what coordinate format you want to enter coordinates as, choose a coordinate format type from the Input Format drop-down list. You can control how coordinates are displayed in the Control Points List by changing the Lat/Long Format drop-down list in General Preferences.

 Items in [ ] are optional, * means zero or more digits, + means one or more digits.

Degrees coordinate format examples:

Lines of latitude run east-west (e.g. the Equator) and lines of longitude run north-south (e.g. Greenwich Meridian). Positive degree values represent north latitudes and east longitudes. Negative degree values represent south latitudes and west longitudes. Directions can be entered either with positing/negative values or using the letters N, S, E or W preceding or following the numerical values, separated or not with a space.

Valid delimiters for Delimited Degrees Minutes Seconds format are:

• space, hyphen (-), colons (:) or underscore (_) : e.g. 43 41 48.98N, 43-41-48.98N, 43:41:48.98N or 43_41_48.98N
• d (degree), single quote (minute), double quote (second): e.g. 43d41’48.98"N

Packed formats require the use of two digits for degrees of latitude (e.g. 1°N must be written 01) and 3 digits for degrees of longitude (e.g. 1°E must be written 001).