Making sense of coordinates.

Google Earth just threw up a couple of numbers for me. I'm having a little bit of trouble making heads or tails of it. Please advise.

http://javascript<b></b>:void(0)34.896616, -117.054139

‎

+34° 53' 47.82", -117° 3' 14.90"


Cheerio,
Nicholas.

A little more info would be nice.

However they look like the same set of coordinates to me; just one is in decimal form the other in mins & secs.

peter

Coordinates

That shows up as Barstow Rail yard. What was the question?

Dick

It is Barstow Yard (the top of the hump, in fact). I'm trying to enter these values into a World Origin but don't know where to start.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Say you enter these coordinates into world origin (I guess in the route config file ?)...what exactly does that do...I guess it makes the Barstow hump the center of the universe...but what does world origin do ?

I believe you enter the decimal coordinates into the properties window of said placed World origin.

peter

From what I understand of it, it determines sunrise/sunset and with additional trig stations you can place the current location of the trig station (deg, Dec Minutes) will show. Those I use as a location verification tool or placement for yards, stations etc.

You would enter 34 53.798 N and 117 3.246 W


Dick

Hi folks, apologies for the slow response. CMP is currently committing some new content and kuid changes I've made, which will take awhile. I currently have an issue of the sun setting too early. It goes like this:

Sun goes down, sky goes dark. Sundown clock color values are set at 1800.
BUT, even as sky becomes very dark, tracks objects everything stays light until 2000 hours.

Would moving the sundown clock later or entering the above trig values help?

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

nicky9499 said:

34.896616, -117.054139

‎

+34° 53' 47.82", -117° 3' 14.90"

Click to expand...

what I believe you can insert is:

34 degrees, 53 minutes, and 47.82 seconds North
by
1177 degrees, 3 minutes, and 14.90 seconds west


edit: some say it does affect the sun, some say it doesnt.... personally, I think it does, Ive used it on quite a few boards, and it seems to reposition the sun.


'-this symbol is used to represent minutes, which is a smaller sub-group of degrees and is used for more precise measurements with in a block

''- is the symbol for seconds, a sub group of minutes which serves a simular function on a smaller scale.
(geography nerd here:hehe: )

hope this helps

nicky9499 said:

Google Earth just threw up a couple of numbers for me. I'm having a little bit of trouble making heads or tails of it. Please advise.

34.896616, -117.054139

‎

+34° 53' 47.82", -117° 3' 14.90"


Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Click to expand...

PerRock said:

A little more info would be nice.

However they look like the same set of coordinates to me; just one is in decimal form the other in mins & secs.

peter

Click to expand...

You are right about these figures Peter, and they need to be changed for the World Origin Marker to work correctly.

Both of these figures need to be changed and while I know how to do it I can not remember the exact details as to why.

In the WOM marker you can only add 2 figures in the screen apart from the direction of North, South etc.

Now to convert the first set of figures you need to do this. The first part of the figure for the WOM is 34 its the second part that needs changing.

34.896616 as I said you have the first part for the WOM, now you need to Multiply the second part by 60, so you get this .896616 x 60 = 53.7969. the figure you then put into the first window thingo in the WOM is 34 and in the second part 53.7969 and the WOM understands this figure.

The same with you second figure of 117.054139. Your first figure is 117 and you then convert the second part the same way, .054139 x 60 = 3.2483. Again you enter 117 in the first window of the WOM and 3.2483 in the second window.

Now your new figures are 34 53.7969 and 117 3.2483.

Now for the other figure from Google Earth the change is slightly different, but has the same "theory" behind it. With 34 53 47.82 you will notice that you already have a similar answer to the above with 34 and 53. But for the final part you need to divide 47.82 by 60 so you get 47.82 / 60 = 0.7970 and again it is what we have above. (the very slight difference happens where you place your courser.

Now for the second part you need to do the same. Your fist 2 figures you need are 117 and 3 and you then divide 14.90 by 60 which is 14.90 / 60 = 0.2483.

So for your Google Earth figures to work in the WOM you now have 34 53 .7970 and 117 3.2483 which is the same as above.

I can not remember the theory behind this, that goes back some years in a thread of the old forum, but it works and is the way that I have been doing it for some time.

Something else to keep in mind is that when you add a WOM to a layout your can not remove it, but you can move it around and you can "hide" it under a building or something. Also there is a very handy tool by Martinvk, kuid number "kuid2:70337:23016:2". Once you have your WOM set up you can place this tool any where on a layout and it will show the exact Lat/Long readings according to your WOM.

Have fun and let me know if you have any other problems.

Craig

Step by step
34° 53' 47.82" is 34 degrees 53 minutes 47.82 seconds
Convert seconds to minutes (1 min/60 sec).
47.82 seconds x 1 minute/60 seconds=47.82/60=0.797 minutes
53 minutes + 0.797 minutes=53.797 minutes
Convert minutes to degrees (1 deg/60 min).
53.797 minutes x 1 degree/60 minutes=53.797/60=0.89661 degrees
34 degrees + 0.89661=34.89661 degrees
Therefore
34° 53' 47.82"=34.89661 degrees

If you're given the 34.89661 degrees and you want to convert it to the form degrees and minutes do this.
34.89661 degrees= 34 degrees + 0.89661 degrees
Convert the fraction of degrees to minutes.
0.89661 degrees x 60 minutes/degree=0.89661x60=53.7966 minutes
34 degrees 53.797 minutes (after rounding up to 3 decimal places)

Bob

Hi all. Thank you all, the amount of information is overwhelming. As it is now late at night here I shall read the posts in detail and deeper understanding tomorrow and post back on the results.

Hi Craig, not really worth much knowing this but I found out by accident that world origins can be deleted from the Objects tab (in fact, one can even move and edit it's properties from there). :wave:
Bob and Craig: Your posts have been very informative, I've bookmarked this page for future reference.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

nicky9499 said:

Hi all. Thank you all, the amount of information is overwhelming. As it is now late at night here I shall read the posts in detail and deeper understanding tomorrow and post back on the results.

Hi Craig, not really worth much knowing this but I found out by accident that world origins can be deleted from the Objects tab (in fact, one can even move and edit it's properties from there). :wave:
Bob and Craig: Your posts have been very informative, I've bookmarked this page for future reference.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.

Click to expand...

Hi Nicholas, I am happy to have helped and hopefully this information can be useful.

I just tried the WOM marker in 2009 and could not find a way to delete it. I know I can move it and edit it but not delete it. I know this is the same in 2004, which is the main version I am currently building in. If there is a way that would be great.

Craig

Copy and paste a bit of terrain over it to delete it. Works for me in 06.

A question about the WOM... Apparently in 2009, Altitude can only be adjusted up to 100 meters? Any higher and it just bounces back down to 100? Whats with that?