Geographic and Attribute Data: Selection, Input, and Editing - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 299

20. You also see there a folder for State Plane. Expand it. Even if you restrict yourself to NAD
1983 (almost exactly equivalent to WGS 1984 in the United States), you will notice the units
of measurement in the state plane system are a hodgepodge. Meters are available for all
states (under NAD 1983), and some states use meters as the primary survey unit. However,
other states use feet (called, variously and equivalently, feet, survey feet, or US feet),
and still others use international feet. 7 Further, it is usual for multiple zones to represent
each state. How many zones is Michigan divided into? (Hint: Michigan uses international
feet.) _________. What are the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) numbers
of the zones? __________________. Collapse the State Plane folder.
Using the Reference System to Discover the Boundary
Coordinates of a State Plane Zone
We can take advantage of what we saw earlier in “Looking at Reference Systems” to set the extent of a
geodatabase. We begin by setting the data frame to the correct coordinate system.
21. Using ArcCatalog, make a new folder under
___IGIS-Arc_ YourInitials
Rename the new folder Digitize&Transform. Make a Folder Connection to that folder.
22. Start ArcMap with a new, empty map. Depending on whether you are using ArcGIS version 10.0
or 10.1, add data from:
C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Desktop10.0
\Reference Systems\usstpln83.shp
or
C:\Program Files(x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.1
\Reference Systems\usstpln83.shp
You will see a somewhat squashed coterminous U.S. map and a really large Alaska. Bring up the
Data Frame Properties window (View > Data Frame Properties; or double-click the word Layers in
the T/C; or right-click the data frame and choose Data Frame Properties). If necessary, activate
the General tab. What do you find for display units? ________________. Activate the Coordinate
System tab. What is the coordinate system? __________________________________.
23. Under the Coordinate System tab, navigate: Projected coordinate Systems > State Plane >
NAD 1983 (US Feet) > NAD 1983 State Plane Kentucky North FIPS 1601 (US Feet). Highlight
it. Under the General tab, the map units should read Feet and you may need to set the display
units to Feet. Click Apply, then OK.
7 The meter is the fundamental unit of length measurement in the world. Both the survey foot and the international
foot are based on it. The survey foot is defined by 1 meter = 39.37 inches exactly. The international foot is defined by
.0254 meters equals exactly 1 inch. These two definitions differ by about 2 parts in 100,000. So, for example, in a
distance of 100 miles there would be about an 11 foot difference.